44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 3, 2023 10:00AM
- Nov/3/23 1:51:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am joining the debate. I will read the parts of the motion that I want to talk about the most. First is “the importance of educating Canadians of all ages about the core values that Polish Canadians have imparted”. The second part I want to draw the attention of the House to is “the government should reflect upon Polish heritage for future generations”.
I have a Yiddish proverb, as I always do. Yiddish and Polish are very closely connected, as many members know. “I am not asking God for an easier burden; I am asking for broader shoulders”, when I speak with respect to this subject.
The previous member who spoke talked about the wave of immigration to Canada. Those waves were caused by events happening in eastern Europe. From the first partition of Poland in 1772, the member spoke about the constitution, Trzeciego Maja, May 3, 1791. It is the second-oldest written constitution in the world. The constitution was then abolished by a future parliament of dubious distinction. The final partition of Poland was in 1795, where Poland disappeared.
Poland's greatest contributions are not institutions and organizations. They are its people; those people all over the world who have fought for freedom in the name of freedom, from the American Revolution to those who came to Canada and built a new life for themselves, but also many who then returned to Poland or to continental Europe and fought in the different wars of independence so that Poland could be free again.
Another thing I want to draw the House's attention to is the Statute of Kalisz, signed in 1264 by another great Pole, Bolesław the Pious. The people of Poland were the first people to give legal rights to the Jewish people in continental Europe, so I want to draw the attention of the House to that as well.
One other great Pole I want to recognize is Zbigniew Gondek. At 99 years old, he passed away. He was a Polish veteran of World War II. He fought at Montecassino, earned the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration. He was a great Polish Canadian.
Another Pole I want to draw the attention of the House to is Jan Karski. Jan Karski wrote Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World, where he described the horrors of the crimes committed by the Nazis, and by the Soviet Union of course. He was born in Łódź in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. He was a proud Pole who fought Red Army soldiers because the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, invaded Poland with its allies in Nazi Germany and crushed Poland's armies after a few weeks. He was made a POW and deported somewhere into Siberia. In his book, he tells the story of the abuse he suffered at the hands of Soviet soldiers. He was also later captured by the Gestapo as a courier for the Polish Underground. In his book, he also relates the story of meeting the U.S. president and relating all the crimes that were committed by Soviet and Nazi soldiers against Jewish people, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians and many others.
I have the book and I want to read from it because there is mention of Canada. Jan Karski had never come to Canada, but when he was being smuggled through Spain, his handlers told him this, and I am going to read from it: “He turned to the conductor and slapped his chest. 'Canada', he said triumphantly. 'Canada', his son echoed. 'Canada', I added weakly. 'Bravo, bravo', the conductor beamed at us.” It was obvious then, if they got captured, to say they were Canadians because Canadians in Spain would be deported to Britain and Britain was their destination of choice.
I wanted to make sure that I mentioned that, when speaking of Jan Karski who was one of those great Polish patriots.
Another person I want to mention is Captain Witold Pilecki, who is credited as the only man to have volunteered to go to Auschwitz. It takes a certain type of human to volunteer to go to a concentration camp. He spent 947 miserable nights there so that he could then relate it back to the Polish Underground and the Polish Underground could then inform the western powers, including Canadians, of the crimes being committed against the Jewish people, Poles, Ukrainians, Slovaks and all those who opposed the Nazi regime.
Witold Pilecki fought in the Polish-Lithuanian war. He fought in the Polish-Soviet war. Like many Poles of his era, he was actually born in Russia. His family had been deported from Vilna to east Karelia, and that is where he was from. He is also one of many Polish Underground members who would be later murdered by the Soviet Union in show trials. He was arrested in May 1947, sent to Mokotow prison, which many Poles know very well. After a show trial that lasted barely a few weeks, he was sentenced to death and he was executed, as were his so-called co-conspirators. Many Poles remember him as one of those great freedom fighters.
I want to mention one thing about those events. Among the Poles in Canada, the Katyn massacre is remembered as a great crime committed by communists in the Soviet Union. Secret order number 001177 was issued by the politburo for the execution and murder of 25,568 people. They were called victims, but these were Polish generals, soldiers, members of the clergy and professors, proud Poles who were murdered by the Soviet Union. The truth only came out in the 1990s and was then shared more broadly with the world. It is one of those crimes that the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, have never been made to pay for, with more public criticism of it.
Closer to home, there was mention of the first Polish member of Parliament, the member for St. Hyacinthe from 1867 to 1870, Alexandre-Édouard Kierzkowski. Those at Hansard do not have to worry; I have written down all the names. If they want to get the notes from me afterward, they can figure out how to spell them correctly.
Some of the community centres were mentioned. I want to draw attention to Maximilian Kolbe. He is a very well-known priest who was in Auschwitz and gave himself in place of a Jewish man. He volunteered himself to be executed before somebody else. That is why so many community centres are named after Maximilian Kolbe. It is also why if someone Polish names their first son Maximilian, the way I did, they will forever be asked the question by other Poles, “Did you name him after Maximilian Kolbe?” It takes a special type of person to volunteer themselves for death for a member of another faith community, because it is right thing to do. That is their calling in life.
The Canadian Polish Congress is a long-running institution. I said I would not talk about organizations, but I want to talk about one gentlemen from this organization, Wladyslaw Lizon, who was a member of Parliament, a Conservative who represented this place proudly. He is a former president of the congress. I also want to note Sir Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski, who was Lieutenant Governor of Ontario between 1896 and 1897. He was personally knighted by Queen Victoria.
To get back to more history, the Trial of the Sixteen is a well-known event about Polish underground leaders who were invited to Moscow after the war officially ended for western European powers, although not so much for Polish people in eastern Europe. In the Trial of the Sixteen, the Polish underground leaders were kidnapped by the NKVD, and most members were then either executed or imprisoned for long lengths of time.
Closer to recent history, the Solidarity movement is well remembered. Many members have family members who were in Solidarity, some whose parents were arrested. My father was a member of Solidarity, but he was never arrested. He did leave Poland a week before my younger brother was born, much to my mom's infuriation.
With Solidarity, everyone thinks of Lech Wałęsa, but we should really draw attention to the woman who kicked off the protests. Anna Walentynowicz was fired five months before her retirement because the communists could not stand that she was simply drawing attention to the fact that people were stealing from and mistreating the workers. She was tired of the communists oppressing the trade union workers. She deserves credit for the kickoff of the protests, which eventually led to martial law in Poland. Many of us in my generation were made to leave during that time period.
I want to talk very briefly about the new brotherhood we have between Poles and Ukrainians, because I think it stretches beyond just the region. It stretches to the diaspora communities in Canada.
For centuries, hundreds and hundreds of years, Poles and Ukrainians have not always gotten along. We are the same ethnic group. We have a different language. We mostly share the same faiths. However, never before has there been such a march of darkness in eastern Europe, where people are struggling and fighting for their own freedoms. Now two people who historically have fought wars and have done terrible things to each other are standing side by side.
I have a Ukrainian intern. I have hosted them in years past. I want to say this, after she gave me a book and I got to read a bit more about Ukrainian history: Without a free Ukraine, there is no free Poland, and without a free Poland, there is no free Ukraine.
I will draw the attention of the House to this, because I know my time is running short. I did get in my Yiddish proverb. The Polish national anthem, Dąbrowski's Mazurka, has two lines in it that speak to what Polish people truly care about. The two lines, in English, are:
Poland has not yet perished, So long as we still live.
The most important contribution Poles have made is the people, the freedom fighters, who have fought for freedom wherever we have been in the world.
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- Nov/3/23 2:01:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, before getting to the heart of the matter, I too want to join my colleagues in expressing my full solidarity with the artisans from TVA who were laid off as part of this restructuring. People are now unemployed, the national news media is in crisis, and a culture is under threat. We must take action and be proactive by translating solidarity and compassion into meaningful action.
I am pleased to rise in the House today with my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois to support Motion No. 75 to establish Polish heritage month. I am just as pleased that the first Polish person to sit in this Parliament where, in my opinion, we should no longer be sitting, was one of my predecessors. He was there when this Parliament was first created in 1867. The first Polish member of the House was Alexandre‑Édouard Kierzkowski, the member for Saint‑Hyacinthe in 1867. That makes me especially pleased to rise to speak today. Mr. Kierzkowski was once the MNA for Verchères in the National Assembly of Quebec with the Parti Rouge, a successor to the Parti Patriote. It is a movement that really resonates with my republican values.
The Bloc Québécois would like to highlight the exceptional contribution made by Quebeckers of Polish origin to Quebec society and to Quebec culture. One cannot say for certain that the history of Polish Canadians is the same as that of Quebeckers of Polish origin, particularly since the Quiet Revolution and the adoption of the Charter of the French Language, precisely because of the special bond that unites Quebeckers of all origins and that makes our identity our common history. I am talking, of course, about our common language, French.
It is interesting to note that the first Polish immigrant to settle in Canada arrived before the British conquest. He was a fur merchant from Gdansk named Dominik Barcz. I hope the the Polish Quebeckers and Polish Canadians who are glued to their screens right now will forgive my occasional mispronunciation. Polish is not my first, second or third language. I actually do not speak Polish, so I apologize for that. As I was saying, this gentleman settled in Montreal in 1752. He was joined there in 1757 by Charles Blaskowitz, a deputy surveyor-general of lands. New France was therefore the first home for Polish people in Canada.
The Bloc Québécois is pleased to join its voice to that of the author of the motion to acknowledge the history of great Quebeckers who are of Polish origin, such as Wanda Stachiewicz, to whom we owe the founding in 1943 of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in Canada. This was a very important contribution. Quebec and the Quebec Polish community has strong institutions, such as the Institut canadien-polonais du bien-être, a health institution whose first centre was inaugurated by René Lévesque in 1966 when he was the health minister. Then, a new centre was inaugurated in 1984 by Dr. Camille Laurin, the father of the Charter of the French Language, when he was health minister. The ethnolinguistic nature of the institute, its independence and its specific mission for Quebeckers of Polish descent was recognized by the National Assembly of Quebec in May 2004. Quebec has been recognizing this immense contribution for a long time.
The destiny and life stories of Polish immigrants have also left their mark on Quebec's culture and literature. In her famous novel Ces enfants d'ailleurs, the great storyteller Arlette Cousture, author of some of Quebec's favourite novels, introduced us to Élisabeth, Jan and Jerzy, who, with their parents Tomasz Pawulski, a history teacher, and Zofia Pawulska, a musician, flee the war in a Europe so sad that “even the birds have fallen silent”. That is a beautiful turn of phrase. In 1939, they travelled from Krakow, Poland, to Quebec, “near a large river, in the colourful [and welcoming] city of Montreal”. That is how it was described.
We are pleased to be a part of designating May 3 as Polish constitution say and the month of May each year as Polish heritage month. Every year we celebrate the national holiday of May 3, which commemorates the day the constitution was adopted, that is, May 3, 1791. It was signed 20 years after Poland was partitioned by Russia and Germany, which, as we know, was a tragic event. It is one of Europe's first modern constitutions.
At least the hereditary monarchy it enshrined was a constitutional monarchy. Inspired by the French Revolution, the constitution ushered in free elections. It was based on the spirit of the Enlightenment and founded on the principles of reason, freedom and the rule of law. At the time, it also stood as a symbol of hope for the eventual restoration of the country's sovereignty. We hold these same concepts dear. Throughout the ages, May 3 has remained an inspiration to Poles in their quest for independence.
During the same period, our ancestors in Quebec were just beginning to experiment with the parliamentary system as the first elections were held and Quebec's first Parliament met in 1792. French Canadians, and later Quebeckers, have also been seeking political freedom ever since. As we tirelessly pursue our own quest for national independence, Quebeckers will joyfully draw inspiration every May 3 from the resilience and commitment of their fellow Quebeckers of Polish heritage.
I would just like to mention one other point. By referring to “Polish Canadians”, the text of the motion portrays Polish people in Quebec and Canada in a way that does not reflect reality. It suggests that the Polish diaspora forms a uniform community across Canada. That attitude is not surprising, of course, since it is in line with English Canada's multiculturalist vision, which depicts Canada's population as a vast cultural mosaic that is supposedly not influenced by the nations that exist within Canada. However, Quebec and Canada's respective national realities have absolutely had an impact on how successive waves of immigrants have been welcomed over the decades.
The linguistic and cultural factor is enough to preclude equating the journey of Polish Quebeckers with that of Polish Canadians. In fact, they do not integrate into the same society. Immigrant populations that settle in Canada outside Quebec integrate into Canadian society, in other words, into the English-speaking majority. Immigrant populations that settle in Quebec integrate into Quebec society, that is, into the French-speaking majority. It is quite possible, and even desirable, to recognize the cultural heritage of Polish people in both Quebec and Canada.
Simply put, to do so does not require that we assimilate Quebeckers and Canadians into a single, solitary nation, as the motion erroneously seems to suggest. We intend to support the motion while highlighting as much as possible the special contribution Polish Quebeckers have made to Quebec society and the key role that the French language has played in their successful integration.
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