POLcast

I hope that while listening to this POLcast episode you will forget about the pandemic and this weird Christmas 2020. This episode #78 celebrates the beauty of Christmas through music. You will learn a lot about Polish carols and other Christmas traditions. In this special Christmas episode I interview  Joanna Ciapka-Sangster , a Polish Canadian violinist from Edmonton, Alberta. Wesołych Świąt i S...

POLcast Episode 77 features two experts talking about Poland, its current situation, its geopolitical position, the present, the past, and the future

In Episode 76 we are talking about antisemitism in two Polish language newspapers published in Canada. You will hear three interviews with: • Michael Mostyn, the Chief Executive Officer of B'nai Brith Canada, • Matthew Samulewski, an activist in the Polish Canadian community, mostly its younger generation, • Thomas Lukaszuk, a Polish-born Canadian politician and former Member of the Legislative As...

In Episode 75 you will hear: Interviews: • Students connect in a coast-to-coast event Quo Vadis Conferences Canada and the Polish Students’ Association (PSA) at the University of Toronto have teamed up to co-host an online conference just for students! POLcast is happy to be the event’s media patron. • Grammy Award nominee’s passion for jazz In February I conducted this carefree – pre-COVID-19 – i...

The pandemic... Every day brings us new numbers - every single one of them represents someone whose life has been affected by this horrifying pandemic that has changed our world in ways we could not have imagined or predicted. Someone infected or deceased. Those numbers keep growing every day and we all pray or wish for the day when we hear that they have begun to drop.  Today we will talk about m...

In Episode 73 - you will hear: Interviews: • The risk is obvious, but it doesn’t matter The pandemic as experienced by someone who risks her life every day, a front line worker. • Polish Easter At the beginning of March, long before we realized the full scope of what was going on around us, I recorded a conversation with Maria Różanska of Just Be Cooking about Polish Easter traditions.

Our world has changed completely. POLcast has now been transformed to COVID-19 themed podcast and will be released more frequently that once a month - every two (or three) weeks, depending on how much strength I will have to produce it.  In Episode 72 you will hear one interview only: Facts and myths about COVID-19 and how we can all beat it This is a conversation with Dr. Rafal Kustra, Associate...

In Episode 71 you will hear: Interviews: • “Memory is Our Homeland” – a tribute to those whose story was never told • Canada’s dark past resonates with Poles in Poland  • Pączki – Just Be Cooking  Maria Rozynska is talking about the International Pączki Day and the magic od pączki making. To attend the Just Be Cooking Pączki event and other evets, see HERE

In Episode 70 you will hear: Interviews: • A no-barrier approach to Polishness It’s fantastic that children of emigrants, Poles who settled in other countries such as Canada, even though they were often born and educated here, are interetsed in their roots, cultural heritage and want to incorporate their Polishness into their identity. There are a few Polish Canadian youth organizations, including...

This is POLcast Christmas Episode.  WESOŁYCH ŚWIĄT i WSPANIAŁEGO NOWEGO ROKU! In Episode 69 you will hear: Interviews: • "Music has been my lifeline": when cancer hits Arthur Lewinowicz, a 27-year-old violin and viola player, composer and teacher, whose life mission is to help kids with various disabilities and special needs learn to play the violin and enjoy music, has been fighting cancer since...

In Episode 68 you will hear: Interviews: • How young Polish Canadians stirred up Polish youth around the world - 10 years of Quo Vadis  On September 20-22, 2019 delegates from all over the world came to Toronto to celebrate 10 years of Quo Vadis, a unique youth movement, one and only in the world. POLcast talks to Ania Barycka, the conference spiritus movens, organizer and veteran. • An Australian...

In Episode 67 you will hear: Interviews: • Was it worth it? A story of an immigrant's journey Liliana Arkuszewski lives in Ottawa. Her book about her immigration journey written in Polish has now been translated to English and recently published.  • A true hero who risked his life to save others Mr. Franciszek Paslawski, who just passed away in September 2019, was the last Righteous Among Nations...

In Episode 65 you will hear: Interviews: • Murder, cover up and forced silence - the war was not over for Poles Wanda Kościa talks to Piotr Szkopiak, British writer/director and his most recent film “The Last Witness”, a thriller which talks about the Katyn 1940 monumental masacre, in itself a tragedy, but also about another tragic aspect of it - the coverup by the Allies, who didn’t want to revea...

In Episode 64 you will hear: Interviews: • Polish language, literature and culture lovers at a North American university Why is it that not only people with Polish roots but also people who have no Polish blood in them study Polish literature, culture and language in countries outside Poland such as Canada? • The land of mosquitos and Poles in Ontario (Part 2) Kaszuby, an area in northern Ontario,...

In this episode you will hear: Interviews: • From building capitalism in Poland to writing books and helping others Agnieszka Dydycz tells her story of the very beginning of capitalism in Poland and her role in creating capital markets at the national level, her interactions with the biggest institutional global investors, and then... her life as a writer and her charity work.   • Polished ice - c...

In this episode you will hear: Interviews: • Polish art in Indian palaces Poland’s connections with many geographically distant countries are a fascinating topic. This story of a famous pre-war Polish painter whose art decorates many palaces in India is told by a Canadian POLcast listener born in India. He had just come back to Canada after visiting his home country and was fascinated with artist...

In this episode you will hear: Interviews: • If you cannot buy it – make it yourself: a story of Kannuk vodka Imagine that you go to a store and want to buy something special as a gift – well, you cannot because it’s simply not available. 99.9 per cent of people would simply leave saying: “too bad. I wish they produced it” and go buy something else. But not Adam Szymkow… • The world’s largest orch...

This is our special Christmas Episode so we would like to wish you WESOŁYCH ŚWIĄT i SZCZĘŚLIWEGO NOWEGO ROKU!   In this episode you will hear: Interviews: •  Art helps people in a remote African village For six years Ted Dawson has travelled every fall to rural Tanzania, an area next door to Kilimanjaro, to help local people build and modernize infrastructure. In November, for the first time, he t...

We are releasing this episode on a very special day - today, on 11 November 2018, Poland and Poles around the world are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining its independence. After 123 years of partitions, on 11 November 1918, the dream of generations of Poles came true: the Polish state was reborn and Poland reappeared on the maps of Europe. In this episode you will hear: The sto...

In this episode you will hear: Interviews: • A ticking piece of Poland with a charity twist Robin Devine makes beautiful watches which she donates as gifts to hundreds of veterans, at the same time providing significant support for many charities (over 22 years around half a million dollars have been donated to numerous charitable causes). Now on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Poland's i...

In this episode you will hear: Interviews: • Poles and Jews meet through their common music Olga Avigail Mieleszczuk , born in Poland, is a singer, accordion player and researcher of Eastern European musical folklore. Since the very beginning of her creative work, she has been focusing on Jewish music of Ashkenazi roots. She converted into Judaism and now lives and works in Jerusalem. She performe...

In this episode you will hear: A childhood dream that came true Maple syrup, Leonard Cohen, hockey – these are Canadian icons. There is one more, very special – Anne of Green Gables, the red-haired orphan whose life in Avonlea in Prince Edward Island was described by author Lucy Maud Montgomery. Bernadeta Milewski is a Pole living in the US, whose life has been influenced by Anne of Green Gables i...

This is a special episode of POLcast, recorded during my visit to Poland in June, where Margaret received the prestigious journalistic Maciej Plazynski Award for her work on POLcast. In this episode you will hear: Interviews: • And the M. Plazynski award for POLcast was granted by…. Jarosław Włodarczyk is the president of the Press Club Polska. This organization is the founder of the annual Maciej...

In this episode: • The eye - where the microscope and the paintbrush meet Eva Henry (Toronto) is an artist and Dorota Skowrońska Krawczyk(California) is a scientist who work together to create VISIONS. • Looking for love stories across Canada Monika Grzelak, a photographer from Toronto, drove across Canada to find and photograph couples in love. • The teacher taking his students far away from the...