AFTER POLAND'S NATIONAL AIRCRAFT WORKS (PZL) ordered all its employees to leave the country in September 1939, to avoid capture by Germans and or Russians, my Father worked in aviation in France, whose language he already knew, and in Brazil while waiting for a Canadian visa. He didn't know Portuguese, used in Brazil, but his slide rule was an international language.
Dad was a bit less than six feet tall, always very fit, with broad Slav features, smiling blue eyes, and a tiny bit of light brown hair. (He was bald even before Mom met him in their late 20s.) He loved working with people whether he was paid or as a volunteer. He wore glasses from childhood but, because of a (undiagnosed) condition, could read for only about 25 minutes before becoming nauseated. So instead of books he read English, Polish and French newspapers and magazines with short articles, Reader's Digest in particular.
He used the telephone a lot, then confirmed conversations with notes he typed on a portable Underwood, with carbons to share by mail as required. At work, at home, in the offices of community organizations, his desks held papers neatly arranged in low piles.
You can't appreciate what Dad achieved in 1969 without knowing all that.
Until 1945 he and Mom rented furnished rooms in Toronto and we travelled with his fellow-engineers on weekends and holidays to see as much of Canada as possible before returning to Poland. But in April 1940, he and other former PZL middle managers around the world noticed that all their senior managers, arrested by Russian troops who invaded Poland on September 16 of 1939, suddenly stopped communicating. Rumours began circulatingabout their murders by Russians in Katyn Forest near Smolensk. Allied authorities refused to investigate because Russia claimed to be an ally in WWII.
In May of 1945 "victory in Europe" was declared. In August the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in Asia. Amid ensuing worldwide confusion "the West" let Russia's paranoid Joseph Stalin sweep hundreds of millions of people into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1945 Eastern European emigres everywhere began reporting that those who returned to their communist-controlled homelands had either been imprisoned or disappeared. Again, the "Western Powers" refused to believe because they feared Russia.
Dad and Mom bought a house in Toronto and became Canadian citizens in 1946, both aged 37.
After de Havilland ended its Mosquito Programme in September 1945, Dominion Magnesium, Ltd. (DML), had hired him as a metallurgical engineer. He designed, even patented, magnesium products ranging from tools for home handy men to huge grain shovels for loading freighters...every imaginable product whose weight mattered. Later he managed a foundry for DML in the Ottawa Valley, and then its manufacturing facility in Toronto. (He had tried starting a tool and die works in Warsaw in 1939 and Toronto in 1945.)
Dad dreamed of becoming a politician, but realized in Canada that he would never speak English well enough to use it ad lib, as politicians must. Instead, he served Polish communities. He believed immigrants should "think both ways": Appreciate Polish heritage while adapting to and especially supporting all things Canadian.
In the 1960s, significant anniversaries arose. As chair of a Millennium Fund established to mark 1000 years of Christianity in Poland in 1966, Dad led fund-raising efforts and distribution of awards. Poland's emigres around the world wanted to celebrate grandly, but many feared activism would result in reprisals against families behind the Iron Curtain. Raising funds for scholarships and books was an acceptable low-key activity.
A law passed by Poland's pre-war government had automatically transferred all able-bodied men, wherever they were employed, to membership in its armed forces whenever Germany and or Russia attacked. Thus on 1 September 1939 Dad became a lieutenant. That entitled him to participate in founding the Polish Combatants Association in Toronto in 1948 (after which he applied for and obtained an honorable discharge).
The Warsaw government would frown on this organization's anniversary celebrations, too.
The 40 PZL members of de Havilland's Mosquito Group had reconstituted a moribund Canadian Polish Congress (CPC) in 1944. It became an umbrella for branches across Canada, and Dad held all the positions on its Head Executive Board in Toronto, one after another. He was National President in 1969 when the branches decided to make a big fuss about its 25th anniversary. They hoped that wouldn't bother anyone in Poland or Moscow.
In their hearts all Polish emigres were united by their Catholic Faith and loyalty to the charismatic, much loved, and very powerful Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski of Krakow.
Dad first asked the Papal Nuncio in Ottawa if an invitation might cause trouble for the Cardinal. Assured it would not, he wrote to ask Wyszynski to preside over the CPC 's celebrations. The Prelate's reply began "I welcome the invitation. However, responsibilities in Poland prevent me from travelling." (Pope Paul VI had twice been refused visas to participate in Poland's 1966 millenial celebrations. The political situation was always delicate.)
He went went on to ask Dad to invite Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow in his stead. The letter was long and detailed: A bishop responsible for emigrant relations would accompany Wojtyla, a secretary would be appointed later, they would be in Canada from 30 August to 14 September, and should visit Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton, London, St. Catharines, and Toronto.
The Cardinal knew his Canadian flock very well and did not waste time! Dad changed only the arrival date, to 28 August to avoid the Labour Day weekend.
An itinerary was drawn up and communications began among CPC boards in the 10 cities, regarding events, lists of guests, funds to pay for everything. The Polish American Congress (PAC), also founded in 1944, invited Wojtyla to visit the States after Canada. It offered to pay first class air fares for the three visitors from Poland and back to Poland.
(PAC was very big and very rich, with a lot of clout. Its national executives met with presidents in the White House, and in 1966 the US Post Office produced a stamp honoring Poland's millennium of Christianity.)
Dad suddenly needed many English translations and original texts. We drafted press releases but delayed distribution to avoid giving the Communist Party of Canada details to attack. Officers of the Congress in the 10 cities were bound to secrecy. Not a word leaked out because people involved with war are good at not sharing information.
PAC urged Dad to ask the RCMP to provide security during the closing banquet in Toronto on 13 September. A form letter came back: "We decline invitations [to] ceremonies, celebrations, conventions, etc., where...no 'police' function is involved".
Members of the CPC and PAC were surprised, because the RCMP they knew during WWII grasped international relationships very well. I repeated that story to many people when Canada spent $2.3 million on security in 2002 for Pope John Paul II's week in Toronto for World Youth Day.
In Montreal, I kept pace with Dad's assignments while preparing the Spring-Summer issue of the Alumnae Review, my last, and clearing out my desk at Marianopolis. My final project, a book launch of The Laurel and the Poppy, a "non-novel" co-authored by Monika Kehoe and her partner Margaret Gillespie, meant welcoming the late Doris Giller and other noteworthy Montreal literati.
Then came word that Cardinal Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, would bring as his secretary dear, delightful Father Franciszek Macharski with whom I decorated a Christmas tree in de Habichts' Fribourg apartment in 1958. I was thrilled!
Before I had time to think about our meeting, in late July Canada's national television network, CTV, offered my husband a job in Toronto. He accepted immediately.
Seven years after being one of about 400 radio news directors in Canada, Charlie would be the assignment editor of one of only two national TV newscasts (the other being the CBC's). CTV planned that he would start in mid-August -- as in "Give CFCF two weeks' notice, leave Montreal on a Friday, begin work for us on the following Monday".
I asked Charlie to give CTV my version of our move: "We'll take August OFF!" He liked it better.
CHAPTER 44 of GLIMPSES -- 30
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GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.
Non-FictionDuring the first 30 years of my journalistic career in the second half of the 20th century, good jobs of all kinds were available all over Canada. Those of us born in the 1930s and early '40s were in great demand because our generation was very smal...
