Five years ago, as of this October, Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant to Canada, met a tragic death at Vancouver Airport. One is struck how heartbreakingly pointless his death was.

It could be argued that the tragedy brings into high relief the curiously uneven nature of Canadian “compassion”. While the launching of various investigations and inquiries is appreciated, it is comparatively easy for various officials to express sympathy after the fact, without asking some hard questions about the societal context that led to such a grave injustice. And sometimes in fact even the ex post facto sympathy was lacking.
One thing to be considered is that some English-Canadians in government posts are usually interested in being manifestly compassionate only towards “officially-recognized” minorities – among whom so-called “white ethnics” like Poles are certainly not numbered.
There are also in circulation in the North American (U.S. and Canadian) media considerable negative stereotypes about Poles. It could be argued that, the more the Poles are habitually derided in the mass media by the so-called opinion-forming elites, the less consideration they will receive from lower-level functionaries in the system.

Let’s cite a concrete example of negative stereotyping. A few, mainly Polish-American critics, have said that that Borat movie is nothing but one long, ugly “Polack joke”. Interestingly enough, Sacha Baron Cohen as “Borat” sprinkles his dialogue with a few Polish expressions – something of which obviously only Polish-speaking persons are immediately aware.
In his magisterial but depressing book, Polish-American professor M.B.B. Biskupski documents Hollywood’s War with Poland, 1939-1945 (University Press of Kentucky, 2010). Incredible as it may seem – during this time of unbelievable agony for Poland and her being one of the most faithful Western Allies – “Hollywood presented a fundamentally distorted and negative portrayal of Poland and the Poles during the Second World War” (p. ix).

The misportrayals have indeed continued over the succeeding decades – misportrayals that are, indeed, hard to pick up on for the captive American and Canadian audience that knows little of the fuller, more complete history of World War II.
One example of the end-result of all this, is President Obama casually uttering the phrase “Polish death camps”.
The tragedy in Vancouver also calls to mind the pointed criticism of the current-day system as an “anarcho-tyranny” – in which, it is said, that the state and the police typically treat real criminals with kid-gloves, but are often considerably indifferent and exacting towards ordinary people.
The term “anarcho-tyranny” was first conceptualized by the controversial paleoconservative theorist Sam Francis, but the term is certainly descriptive and explanatory of many current-day realities. The provenance of the term should not be held against it.
One notices, for example, that there are frequently various dubious elements streaming unimpeded through Canada’s airports – whereas it is one honest, unassuming man with a poor knowledge of English that gets fatally caught in the gears of “security”.
Despite close to a million persons of Polish descent in Canada today, the register of Polish-Canadians on the Canadian political and cultural scene seems to be very low indeed. In Toronto, there appears to have been little but an accelerating decline in the community’s vibrancy since the 1970s, when the multiculturalism policy had been welcomed with such great expectations.

There have been several waves of Polish immigrants to Canada, from at least four, distinctly different Polish societies – including that of the Partition Period, 1795–1918, when Poland was under harsh foreign occupation – as well as their generations of offspring.
The post-World War II wave of Polish immigration to Canada consisted mostly of Polish soldiers who had fought at the side of the Western Allies – and were unable and unwilling to return to a Sovietized satellite Poland – some who came to Canada directly, and others who moved to Canada after settling in Britain. Those Polish soldiers who came directly were, as the price of their admission, required to work for two full years on remote farms. Conditions there were sometimes none too pleasant.
It could be argued that some "white ethnics" in today’s Canada have indeed reached a virtual vanishing point as a matter of positive interest and concern for Canadian government, media, and large corporations.

Mark Wegierski

Dalsza część artykułu dostępna po wykupieniu subskrypcji. Kup tutaj!