Mark Wegierski asks, can there exist a Polish-Canadian identity with declining Polish language knowledge in Canada?   In the statistics of the Canada Census, over the last few decades, the percentage of persons of Polish descent who claim knowledge of the Polish language, is not particularly large (around a third). Indeed, it can be seen that knowledge of the Polish language is declining among the generations of Polish descent born in Canada. In my opinion, this places the Polish-Canadian newspapers, most of which appear almost […]

It could be argued that, over the last five decades, the Canadian Right has conclusively failed to articulate a “counter-ethic” to the now-prevalent “Liberal idea of Canada” and is now on the fast track to extinction in the Canadian polity. The origins of the decline of the Canadian Right can be traced to the battles from 1963 to 1968 between Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson and the staunch Tory John Diefenbaker (who was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963), and the initial burst of “Trudeaumania” […]

Based on an English-language draft of a presentation for the 2013 Conference of the Polish Association for American Studies (PAAS) (Eating America: Crisis, Sustenance, Sustainability) (Wroclaw, Poland: University of Wroclaw, Department of English Studies), October 23-October 25, 2013. The paper was accepted for publication in The Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 8 (2014), but additional work on the paper, necessary for publication there, was not completed because of unforeseen personal circumstances. Green or ecological/environmentalist ideas, which are sometimes instantiated by capital-G Green parties, are […]

Partially based on a draft of an English-language presentation read at the 6th Congress of Polish Canadianists (Polish Association for Canadian Studies — PACS) (Poznan, Poland: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan), April 5-7, 2013. Beginning in the late-1960s, Canada has enacted an extensive policy of multiculturalism, which became especially entrenched since the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Governments in Canada (federal, provincial, and municipal) have been committed to supporting (at least to some extent) the cultural and organizational activities of […]

Partially based on an English-language text that appeared in Polish translation under the title “Kanada – eksperyment wielokulturowosci.” (Canada: an experiment in multiculturalism) trans. Olaf Swolkien. Miedzynarodowy Przeglad Polityczny (International Political Review) (Warsaw, Poland: Fundacja Srodkowoeuropejska – The Foundation for Central European) no 5 (no 10) (December 2004-January 2005), pp. 221-231. Formally speaking, Canada is a federal constitutional monarchy of the British Commonwealth with a parliamentary, not congressional, system. The head of the federal government and the primary decision maker is the prime minister, the […]

(An abbreviated version of this paper was posted in English on Telos Scope, the blog of Telos Press, October 26, 2017.) (The paper was read in English at the Telos in Moscow Conference. After the End of Revolution: Constitutional Order amid the Crisis of Democracy (Moscow, Russia: Telos-Paul Piccone Institute and National Research University Higher School of Economics), September 1-2, 2017.) This presentation compares two societies, which – although both claim to be “Western” as well as vibrant liberal democracies, are in many aspects quite […]