Mark Wegierski describes the unhappy weakness of an attenuated European fragment-culture in current-day Canada. It can be seen today that there are no opinion journalists in any major Canadian newspapers, and very few comparatively well-known authors of books of English-language literary fiction, genre fiction, or works of social, political, or cultural commentary in Canada, who could be identified as belonging to the Polish-Canadian community. Until a few years ago, a person comparatively well-acquainted with the community could probably think only of Eva Stachniak and Irene […]

Despite the fact that there are over a million persons of Polish descent in Canada (according to the Canada Census) the community appears to have had very little impact on the political, social, and cultural life of Canada as a whole. During May 10 — May 13, 2012, I had attended the conference “Creative Writing in the 21st Century: Research and Practice” at Humber College, Lakeshore Campus in Toronto (in Etobicoke, a western suburb of Toronto). Located among many acres of green space near Lake […]

Canadian Polonia (the Polish-Canadian community) seems to have a perennial misapprehension of what constitutes “objective” cultural influence and power in today’s Canada. Indeed, some representatives of Canadian Polonia have a rather curious definition of what „culture” and „cultural activities” actually consist of. Considering persons of Polish descent in Canada are said to number close to a million, it appears the community has a comparatively minor influence in Canadian society. The Polish community in Canada seems to have a larger number of prominent artists (such as […]

Canadian ‘Civil War’: Separatism vs. Federalism in Modern Canada was a board wargame published by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI), then the premiere gaming company, in 1977. On the game’s cover-sheet, it is called “A Political Simulation Game”, and it is said that “the time is: 15 November 1976.” This is a game with mostly political, rather than military conflict, played on an abstract map, where the four different factions struggle with each other. These are the Federalists (Red counters); the Provincial Moderates (Orange counters); the […]

Brian Mulroney may be one of the most disappointing Prime Ministers Canada has ever had. As leader of the federal Progressive Conservative party, Mulroney at that time ostensibly represented the main focus of what could be called the “Centre-Right Opposition” in Canada. The use of the term “Centre-Right Opposition” is meant to suggest the perennial underdog status of that option in Canadian politics, especially after the federal election of 1963, when Liberal Lester B. Pearson defeated the staunch Tory, John Diefenbaker. As each successive decade […]

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 exclusively […]