Join us with events before and after official celebration

Our main celebration of Polish Canadian Heritage Day in Alberta will take place on June 8, 2025. Because this day is full of attractions, we decided to organize two other very interesting events on another days. Details below.

Book Talk

Thursday, June 5, 2025 at 7:00 pm, in Polish Cultural Centre, Varsovia Room

Escape from Siberia, Escape from Memory, An Odyssey Across Two Oceans & Nine Countries to Arrival Home

Author: Paul Wojdak

Escape from Siberia, Escape from Memory
AN ODYSSEY ACROSS TWO OCEANS &
NINE COUNTRIES TO ARRIVE HOME

PAUL WOJDAK’S FATHER, PAWEL, was born in 1912 in Novosibirsk, Siberia. During the 1800s, many Polish people were banished to Siberia for rising against czarist Russia’s repressive policies aimed to destroy Polish language and culture, and they eventually lived in Siberia for generations. By the 1920s, war and chaos followed the Russian Revolution, and Poles were cast as “enemies of the people,” fleeing east as refugees. Most died from disease, starvation, cold, or violence, including Pawel’s parents, and many Polish children were tragically trapped in Siberia—a seven-year-old Pawel among them.

Documentary Film

“Memory is Our Homeland”

Thursday June 12, 205 at 7:00 pm, Polish Cultural Centre, Combatants’ Hall

Memory is Our Homeland is a documentary film charting the lost story of Polish refugees in Africa from 1942-52- a journey that brought a group of children through Siberia, Iran, India and East Africa, to new lives in Canada and across the global Polish diaspora.

It follows the story of Kazia Kolodziej (née Gerech), the filmmaker’s grandmother, and other Polish refugees, as they meditate on the meaning of memory, identity, and homeland. Grappling with memories of a traumatic exile in the Soviet Union, followed by an adolescence full of discovery in a Polish refugee camp near the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, we see how these women’s lives have been shaped by early years fraught with insecurity and change.

Memory Is Our Homeland and director Jonathan Kolodziej Durand

Jonathan Kołodziej Durand, a Montreal-based filmmaker born in Ottawa, was a student at McGill when he mentioned that his grandmother had been deported to the GULAG by the
Soviets and then spent several years in a refugee camp in Tanzania. His professor smiled, and said, “That never happened. There’s no historical record of anything like that.”

History depends on who is writing it—and who is interested in knowing it. Jonathan was deeply interested, spending nine years researching the circumstances of his grandmother’s remarkable odyssey.

The result is Memory Is Our Homeland, a film shot on location in Belarus (prewar Poland), England, Canada, and in Tanzania. The film has been screened at festivals around the world, with Jonathan appearing in person in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Algeria, Poland, Russia, and across Ukraine. It has also been broadcast internationally by Al Jazeera and TVP Polonia.

Thanks to events organized by the Polish Canadian Association of Calgary and the Polish Combatants in Canada, Branch # 18, Calgary to celebrate Polish Canadian Heritage Day in Alberta, Durand and his film are now coming to Edmonton at the Polish Hall (10960 104 Street NW) on June 5 and Calgary at the Polish Canadian Cultural Centre (3015 15^th Street NE) on June 12. Both free screenings are at 7:00 pm.

At once uniquely Polish and universally relevant, Memory is Our Homeland tells the story of Soviet deportations of Poles to the cold, dark slave camps in the GULAG of subarctic Russia and then an incredible journey to the brilliant colours, warmth, and safety of a refugee camp in Tanzania.

Jonathan’s film is a tribute to his grandmother, a Canadian immigration story, and a powerful reminder that our stories must be told and shared.

Duran works in film and photography in Montreal. Driven by a passion for untold stories, he is currently making a documentary about civilian volunteers in Ukraine and in the process getting to know Ukraine and Ukrainians, and the ruthless eastern empire that has repeatedly tried to destroy them.

Duran started volunteering in March 2022, helping with evacuation of refugees to Przemysł, Poland ,a city near the border of Ukraine. From there, he started humanitarian deliveries further into Ukraine and, last February, he delivered a donated neonatal ambulance from Amsterdam to Kharkiv- an experience that reminded him of his grandmother’s family, many of whom perished in the GULAG, including a baby born in 1940 who died just months later.

It was an incident in Kharkiv in 2022 that cemented Jonathan’s resolve to document the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine and the courage of the volunteers aiding the victims. Alongside Ukrainian colleagues, he visited a memorial near a mass grave that commemorates the 4,000 Polish officers murdered by the Soviets in 1940-a crime know as the Katyn Massacre. The site, then located close to the front lines, had been shelled by Russian artillery just days earlier. In Putin’s empire, even the dead are not allowed to rest in peace.

His work in Ukraine created for Jonathan a strong bond to Ukraine. He is please and proud that Poland has taken in a million Ukrainian refugees and strongly support Ukraine’s fight for freedom. Back in Canada, he hopes that the Polish and Ukrainian communities will support one another as well, untied by their shared history of resistance against a common enemy.