GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

57. Brazil at top speed

MY PARENTAL UNIT TALKED OCCASIONALLY ABOUT visiting Mom's brother Tadeusz in Sao Paulo, but postponed it until they lost interest. Dad simply exchanged letters with fellow refugees there and in other countries.

In 1980 they suggested I go to Sao Paulo to visit Tadeusz's widow Ania, and write travel articles while we still had a family connection and people to provide lodgings and local information. Both of Tadeusz's children would be there -- Dorota in Brasilia on a three-year rotation as a Foreign Office Consul, and Artur managing a project in Sao Paulo for the Swedish engineering multi-national Sandvik.

The Globe and Mail's Travel Editor, Joe Cohen, was about to retire when I asked if he'd like articles from Brazil. He suggested I approach the op-ed page editor instead. She was very interested in Brazil's high inflation, alternative fuels for cars, gas rationing, how Brasilia the Capital was doing at age 20, all with photos. A new editor of the alumni quarterly at St. Michael's College, my alma mater in the University of Toronto, named a couple of grads in Rio and said he'd welcome story ideas about them.

So I had good reasons to go, and booked flights for a month beginning in mid-October.

Mom and Dad probably didn't want to see Ania again. In Warsaw in the 1920s and '30s they'd belonged to a large social circle in which Tadeusz and his first wife, Wanda, were the most elegant, happy "beautiful couple" and everyone's favourite friends. Married in September of 1939, they had two daughters while working in the underground Home Army against both Germans and Russians. In 1943, because he knew too much to risk being arrested and tortured, Tadeusz was smuggled out by the Allies and worked for them in London. 

After 1945, disturbing gossip reached us and family in Warsaw: Ania had followed Tadeusz to London. Someone had told him Wanda, Helena and Marta were dead. He was unable to return to a Poland ruled by communists because they have perpetual memories about opponents. He married Ania and they settled in Brazil.

Somehow and I don't know when, we all learned that Wanda, Helena and Marta were alive in Warsaw. No one knew if Ania had known that before she went to London.

In 1947 Wanda was imprisoned by Poland's communist government for her underground opposition to them 1939-45. She was told often that if Tadeusz returned to Poland she would be set free to rejoin her daughters. She always responded she "could scarcely remember who he was". In 1955 she was released with severe tuberculosis and lived in Warsaw.

Dad's correspondents in Brazil wrote that although Tadeusz didn't keep in touch he was a civil host when they knocked on his door. They sensed he was very unhappy, perhaps even ashamed of how his life had turned out.

My grandmother and Mom wrote to him for years without receiving a reply. While Granny was in Toronto during 1962 because of my wedding and he brought Dorota and Artur to visit us, no one asked questions. We were grateful to see him and meet them.

In Poland in 1959 I'd learned that Tadeusz supported Wanda and their girls financially from the late 1940s while he rose to become Brazilian vice-president for global Squibb Corporation. He paid for university educations for the Warsaw daughters, and for his Brazilian children to earn degrees in Poland. All four lived for at least a year in the other country, bonding happily for life. In the 1970s, his health failing, he moved back to Warsaw. He and Wanda didn't live together but saw each other almost every day until her death. He died a year later.

While my parents had understandable attitudes towards Aunt Ania, I felt only mild curiosity. She was very hospitable during my stay, but she couldn't know if gossip had reached me, nor did she ask, so we couldn't relax together. I was polite but couldn't warm up to her.