This story is featured in Episode 68 On September 20-22, 2019 delegates from all over the world came to Toronto to celebrate 10 years of Quo Vadis, a unique youth movement, one and only in the world. Quo Vadis in Latin means “where are you going?” It is the title of a 1896 iconic historical novel by one of the most famous Polish writers Henryk Sienkiewicz, which contributed to his Nobel Prize in literature in 1905. Young Polish Canadians adopted this phrase as the title of their conferences. The focus on the themes of heritage, leadership and unity. Over…
Author: Malgorzata P. Bonikowska
This story is featured in Episode 68 While at the Quo Vadis conference in Toronto, I met a really enthusiastic young Pole Szymon Motylek. His life is quite a story, as you will see. Szymon lives in Edinburgh. As a Quo Vadis veteran (co-organizer of Quo Vadis conferences in Australia) Szymon was awarded the Sir Casimir Stanislaw Gzowski Quo Vadis Leadership Medal
This story is featured in Episode 68 At the Quo Vadis conference in Toronto I met a delegate passionate about Poland, its culture and language – Ericcsson Sing is Chinese and comes from Hong Kong. He is soon finishing his studies in Canada and is planning to move to Poland. Ericsson speaks good Polish and is active in the Polish Students’ Association at the University of Toronto. Ericsson has a Polish fiancee Kinga and is in love not ony with her but also with Poland and th Polish lifestyle.
This story was featured in Episode 67 (please listen!) Matylda Lis, a vivacious young Polish Canadian woman who travels all over the world, has fallen in love with Dawson City, Yukon, famous for the Klondike Gold Rush (1896-1899). Matylda spends all her summers there and has become a part of its community. Matylda grew up in a theatre family – she’s the daughter of actress Agata Pilitowska whom we featured on POLcast and the granddaughter of Maria Nowotarska, an accomplished Polish actress who created a unique, one of a kind theatre in Toronto, which travels the world. They are all very close.…
This story was featured in Episode 67 (please listen!) Liliana Arkuszewski lives in Ottawa. Her life is full of adventures – she spends half of each year in Mexico. And on her way to Canada in the early 1980s. she travelled across three continents. Years later she wrote a book about her immigration journey – it was published in Polish and was titled “Czy było warto? Odyseja dżinsowych Kolumbów”. Now, a few years later, her book was translated to English by Charles S. Kraszewski and published under the title “Was it worth it? Columbus in jeans”. It’s the book’s (and its…
This story is featured in Episode 67 (please listen!) This was three years ago, in 2016. My good friend Eli Rubenstein, a Holocaust educator, writer and filmmaker, the religious leader of Congregation Habonim, a Toronto synagogue founded by Holocaust survivors, Canadian director of the March of the Living and creator of March of Remembrance and Hope, with whom I have worked on a number of projects and who was featured in two episodes of POLcast (Episode 14 and Episode 15), called me to ask if I would interview a special person – the last Righteous among the Nations in Canada. Mr Franciszej Paslawski, then 94, saved…
This story is featured in Episode 66 What is it like to work at one of the top universities in the world – the famous Stanford University in California? The univeristy was founded 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a U.S. Senator and former Governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducationaland non-denominational institution. Few people of Polish origin work at this spectacular…
This story is featured in Episode 65 In Episode 30 we featured Wanda Kościa, a London-based Polish-born director, producer and award winning documentary filmmaker, and her BBC film “Hunting the Nazi Gold Train” – a mysterious story of a train full of gold, buried by the Nazis in Polish Silesia. Wanda Koscia acted as our POLcast interviewer before in Episode 58, when she spoke to Neal Ascherson. This interview she did for POLcast is with Piotr Szkopiak, also based in Britain, writer/director, born in England, the son of Polish refugees from the Second World War. His grandfather Wojciech Stanislaw Wojcik, was…
This story is featured in Episode 65 Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology – everybody talks about these hot terms but not everyone understands what they are all about. Thomas Jankowski is the Chief Digital & Growth Officer at Coinsquare, Canada’s leading exchange for trading Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies. Founded in 2014, Coinsquare is 100% Canadian-owned and operated, located in downtown Toronto. It was awarded the title of the Blockchain Company of the Year – AI and FinTech Awards 2018. In March Thomas gave a TEDx talk about “How Coinsquare Survived the Death Knell of Crypto Winter and The Most Promising Trends this…
This is the first POLcast episode created and produced by Margaret P. Bonikowska alone.Please share your opinions here 🙂 In Episode 64 you will hear: Interviews: • Polish language, literature and culture lovers at a North American university Why is it that not only people with Polish roots but also people who have no Polish blood in them study Polish literature, culture and language in countries outside Poland such as Canada? • The land of mosquitos and Poles in Ontario (Part 2) Kaszuby, an area in northern Ontario, about 200 kilometres west of Ottawa, named after the part of northern Poland from which…