This story was featured on: Episode 23 Donna Solecka Urbikas Donna was born and grew up in Chicago but her Polish-born mother and much older half sister had endured the wartime trauma of Soviet gulag slave labour in Siberia. War and exile created a profound bond between mother and older daughter, which was inaccessible to Donna. Donna wanted to be like all her American friends, but her family life was very different – it was full of horrible memories of her sister and their common mother. She explores these painflul family issues and her process of understanding and coming to terms…
Author: Malgorzata P. Bonikowska
This story was featured in: Episode 22 FRANK RUDZICZ Ludwig the robot is the result of extensive research in speech recognition, robotics and Artficial Intelligence by Dr. Frank Rudzicz, a third generation Pole from Toronto. In his early 30s, he has a doctorate in computer science and numerous publications., and is a scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute as well as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His goal is to improve the quality of life of individuals with cognitive or physical disabilities, especially suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Ludwig not only talks,…
This story was featured in: Episode 20 Ariel Bialski aka Heights Beats Ariel is a 31-year-old Toronto DJ, drummer, piano player, composer, music producer, actor, comedian, who has released three albums. His beats made it to a Juno award-winning hip hop album in Canada. He has composed music for commercials, film and TED Talks. He is currently living and working in Poland, where he is a highly successful and popular DJ and musician. Ariel produces his own podcast Heights Beats: The Podcast Ariel’s website The album that sounds like 1,000 bucks Ariel told us a lot of interesting (and frankly…
American artist Frank Stella has made his debut with Sprüth Magers, showing works from his 1970’s “Polish Villages” and “Bali” series of the noughties at their Berlin gallery. More
This story was featured in: Episode 10 Adam Makowicz is a true master of jazz improvisation. In this episode he talks about the art of improvisation and what he as a jazz musician learned from the best classical composers and pianists. In part 2 of our segment we meet Polish Canadian classical violinist Joanna Makowicz (Adam’s wife, and the reason why he lives part time in New York and in Toronto). She talks about the book “400 Years of Polish Immigrants in America 1608-2008” by Mariusz M. Brymora and Radoslaw Sikorski. Among the famous Poles in America presented in this book, there…
This story was featured in: Episode 10 Bartek (Bart) Soroczynski was born in Poland into a circus family. He emigrated to Canada with his parents, trained as a circus artist and after playing the leading part in “Nomade” by Cirque Eloize (with which he travelled widely and received the 2005 GEMINI AWARD together with the artists from Nomade (Cirque Eloize) for the film Nomade : At Night, the Sky is Endless in the Best Performance in a Performing Arts Program or Series Category, Toronto Film Festival, Canada), he was introduced to the theatre. This started a wave of success and acting…
This story was featured in episode 9 I remember Kamil from the times he was an active member of the young Polish community (Polonia) in Canada. Always participating in everything that was going on, ready to help others, curious. After some time I learned that Kamil was in Brussels, doing great. As a Canadian of Polish descent now living and working in the heart of Europe, he has an unique perspective which we explored in our conversation (Episode 9). Kamil MROZ graduated in Biochemistry and Chemical Engineering from the University of Ottawa in Canada. In 2011 he completed an MA…
This story was featured in: Episode 8 Why do many adult Canadians devote hours of their after work time to study the Polish language? There are many different reasons. One of the women-students said, talking about her Polish husband: “Why do I do it? Because I love him!” I met two groups of such students who take evening courses in Polish run by Iwona Malinowski, a passionate teacher with many years of teaching experience both in Canada and in Poland, the President of the Polish Teachers Association in Canada and a highly respected member of the Canadian Polish community. I sat…
This story was featured in: Episode 6 Eliza Sarnacka-Mahoney – Polish journalist, columnist and writer whose works appear in Polish language newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. Author of books on American life and politics, novels and collections of poetry. As a mother raising two bilingual daughters she is actively involved in the movement to promote and popularize bilingualism in the Polish communities living outside of Poland. Her columns about bilingual home and education run in numerous Polish publications in North America (including our “Gazeta”, where we created a column “Our bilingual children” – Nasze dwujęzyczne dzieci).…
This story was featured in: Episode 5 Janusz Kozinski Prof. Janusz Kozinski, a Pole from Krakow, whose academic training and career took him all over the world: Krakow, Oxford, Harvard, MIT, McGill U. in Montreal, Sasktajetweb, University of Utah, the University of Leeds, Imperial College, and Queen Mary College, London. He is is the founding dean of Lassonde School of Enigineering at York University in Toronto. He created the idea of Renessaince engineering, a product of his own multidisciplinary soul – globally trained academic, multidisciplinary researcher, creative thinker, arts connesieur, entrepreneur, polyglot (he speaks five languages) and an approachable and…