a Wee Poland’s in the Rockies ! or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Identities Kinia Adamczyk, The Link (Concordia University) MONTREAL (CUP) This is my account of twelve intellectually stimulating days and eleven sleepless nights. The setting: Alberta’s beautiful Rocky Mountains. The cast of characters: a Newsweek senior editor, a Globe and Mail journalist, art scholars and 33 students. Those twelve days were filled with history, 'literature, politics, and friendship. The theme: thinking about my identity as a first-generation Polish immigrant in North America. The other students and I embarked on a journey to discover more about our common background at the second ever “Poland in the Rockies” conference. We shared not only an interest in “Polish things,” but also questions about the:complexity of identity. “T found out that I.am not alone,” said Eric Bednarski, a 29-year-old\documentary film- maker from Nova Scotia, “[and] that there are many other people like me ‘out there... born- again Poles with a dual Polish-Canadian identity—educated and assimilated Poles that still have a strong connection to Poland.” We held our breaths as we got a first-hand account of the 80s anti-communist movement in Poland from Adam Szostkiewicz, a journalist and political activist. This former political pris- oner now writes freely for Polityka, something of a Polish version of Maclean’s magazine. During solidarity times, it wasn’t unusual to get shoved. into a truck and to receive a good beat- ing just for wearing the movement’s pin. Andrew Nagorski, a senior editor at Newsweek said, “If [a program] like this had been offered at the time when I was a student, I’m sure I would have jumped at the opportunity.” Between lectures, we sat on the grass in the shade, laughing at some of Nagorski’s report- ing anecdotes from around the world. He gained international fame after Soviet authorities expelled him from the country in 1982 for his “enterprising reporting.” He launched the Polish edition of Newsweek in 2001. We shared laughs, but also feelings of sorrow, as we looked back at the past. Stan Oziewicz, a journalist at the G/obe and Mail, told us a story of his father, a Second World War bomber pilot. After fighting under the Allies, Mieczyslaw Oziewicz felt like hundreds of Poles betrayed by the Yalta Agreement, under which Poland’s faith was handed over to Stalin’s Soviet Union. “Tt was particularly painful and bitter for people like my parents,” explained the journalist, “who, while Hitler’s forces were storming through Poland’s western frontier in September of 1939, were later rounded up from their homes in eastern Poland and sent by rail boxcars to Stalin’s slave-labour camps in northern Russia and Soviet Central Asia.” But it wasn’t all sitting back, listening to stories. Sweat was dripping from our foreheads as we tackled the translation assignment proposed by Bill Johnston, one of the leading translators of Polish literature in North America. We discovered the challenges he faces every day as he tries to preserve the cultural references of the works he translates whilst keeping them accessi- ble to English readers. Learning more about Polish literature was one the most important parts of the conference to many of us. “The [day that featured a] focus on language and culture through the lens of Polish literature was a very interesting day of lectures for me, precisely because language and our definitions are so intricately tied with our identity,’ said Kasia Wisniewska, who recently graduated from English literature at McGill. The romantic in me thrived as we watched the only colour pre-war footage of Poland in the short film, Land of my Mother, narrated by Eve Curie, the daughter of scientist Marie Curie. Through her bright red lips and French-salted English, Curie gracefully guided us through the still undestroyed monuments of Warsaw, Gdansk and Krakow, and others. Se 4 4 THe OTHER PRESS SEPTEMBER 28 2006 We watched in solemn silence as a participant of the program, Alexi Marchel, p dramatic reading about the inside a Gestapo Prison in 1942-44: “The Letters of Ki Wituska.” This young woman, although condemned to death after being captured t German secret police, was full of life, warmth and optimism. “I am first a human | only then a Pole,” wrote Wituska in one of her letters, which were translated from author and researcher, Irene Tomaszewski. At night, we sat around campfires with the speakers, talking about the Kaczyns (the current leaders of Poland), Jagiellonian University’s beautiful library in Krakow future of the country. Those nights, we also sang, danced, and filled the time laugh our cultural idiosyncrasies. The question of my identity is an internal battlefield I’ve been leading for the k: The seminar was not only an intellectual journey, but also an opportunity to accept identity by discovering people who share similar experiences, interests, and a comm ground. I barely slept the whole time, but who needs sleep when you're celebrating peace? The next Poland in the Rockies conference will be held in the summer of 2008 students of all backgrounds interested in Polish things. Visit www.polandintherockie: more information.