Polish and Ukrainian Life in Oshawa
August 27th, 2018
Firstly, as mentioned with the diversity of Oshawa's cultural communities, newly arrived displaced people were able to find help and support among established immigrants of their or a similar background. Community life was a big plus to living in Oshawa, especially for those of Polish or Ukrainian descent.
I got involved quickly with the Polish community here, which was very warm and welcoming” – Bill Dranski.
The kind of help received was a wide range – from housing to references for jobs to advice and emotional support. It was certainly important to find something familiar in contrast to the unfamiliar country one found oneself in. Shows of support for the displaced people included initial community fundraising as well as events of welcome, upon arrival.
Five young ladies were given a marvelous demonstration of Canadian hospitality and, as a result, are confident that their future in this their new self-chosen home is going to be a happy and bright one" – The Times-Gazette on March 15th, 1948.
On March 11th, 1948, ten women from a German DP camp arrived to work at the Ontario Hospital in Whitby. The following Sunday, five of them, all Ukrainian in background, came to Oshawa to "attend the church service at the St. John's Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church" where "refreshments were served and everybody joined in a sing-song of Ukrainian folk songs." Afterwards, they were invited by multiple people to come over for dinner, which is a similar experience to that of the welcome participants in the Oshawa Museum's oral history project also received. For example, Lech Belina-Prazmowski, a Polish veteran who had arrived in 1947, and people he knew were taken out to dinner on the weekends by families who had been there longer than he had. Later that March 1948, the five Polish and Latvian girls in the group that had arrived in Whitby were "guests of honour... at a banquet held in Oshawa by Polish groups of that city" (Times-Gazette, March 23 1948). The atmosphere was like a "happy house party" with the Polish hall on Olive being full to capacity. The Polish Ladies' Club, the Polish Young People's Club, and Polish War Veterans of Oshawa had organized the event. The War Veterans' Choir and a sing-along of Polish and Canadian songs were the night's entertainment. The Times-Gazette closes this article confident that the girls will be invited back to Oshawa for more festivities including those "in connection with the approaching Easter season." Indeed, Stefan Malish and the group he arrived with to Oshawa were purposefully included in the celebration of Ukrainian Easter. These few examples are indicative of the various efforts made to welcome and include the DPs into the existing Polish and Ukrainian communities in Oshawa.
- We lived with another Polish family, who cooked us our first meal in Canada" – Victoria Szczepanski.
Help from one’s community, or an immigrant community in general, meant an “in” – a way to bypass the issues caused by being in a new environment with little to no connections otherwise. The “old” immigrants often helped the “new,” as Amelia Belina-Prazmowski said as she recalled her late husband Lech’s story. Many newly arrived DPs, regardless of country of origin, rented rooms with these established immigrants: Joseph Filletti, originally from Malta, remembers living on the top floor of a Ukrainian family’s home, and becoming very good friends with them. Justina Novak and her husband, both of Slovenian background, also rented from a Ukrainian family upon first settling in Oshawa. In a neat way of closing the circle, Eddie Kolodziejczak notes that his father and mother chose their large house so that they could rent rooms to other displaced people. Similarly, another participant recalled the following:
At the end of 1953 we, in turn, sponsored my uncle's family of five to come to Canada" – Bill Dranski. |
Other reasons around choosing where to live in Oshawa included being close to work, as well as community institutions – such as the Polish and Ukrainian halls and churches. Stefan Malish, for example, chose where to live in Oshawa based on there being many factories nearby, as had many other Ukrainians who already lived in the area and had subsequently built their community's establishments nearby. For Mr. Malish and many others, everything they needed was within walking distance. Similarly, Victoria Szczepanski's house was close to Oshawa's two Polish halls, one of which was on Olive and the other on Banting. She mentions how the members of the hall on Olive welcomed them; quite a large group had come from the mines in Renabie to Oshawa at the same time. The many different organizations for just the Polish and Ukrainian residents of Oshawa reflect both their large numbers as well as their diversity.
We lived among people of the same Polish background as ourselves. We created a church for our group, socializing at one or the other Polish halls.” – Victoria Szczepanski.
There are a couple reasons behind the multiple different organizations. In general, it is either to do with religious affiliation – for the Ukrainians, either Greek Orthodox or Eastern Catholic – or in terms of when the particular groups of people arrived. While in Oshawa, stories of newcomers being helped by the "old-timers" are abundant, friction between these groups was noted to be very evident elsewhere. Gordon Bohdan Panchuk, who served in the Canadian army during the war and was an advocate for the bringing over of Ukrainian refugees to settle, expressed doubt that the two groups be able to easily integrate due to their varying expectations of each other (Luciuk 2000). For the Polish community in Oshawa, there was a clear desire to "keep communication lines open" between the different organizations with the creation of the Polish Organizations Coordinating Council in 1963 (Events in the Life of St. Hedwig's Parish and the Polish Community in Oshawa, 1997). The main thing to take away is that the Polish and the Ukrainian communities are certainly made of up of several diverse groups within them.
Many of the participants mention that they had no issues getting involved in their communities and nearly all were involved in something or other. Victoria Szczepanski said that she didn't have time for much while being busy raising her children, but her daughter states her involvement in the Polish National Union Group 7 and Polish National Alliance Group 21 as well as her attendance of Polish masses at the hall on Banting Ave. and later at St. Hedwig's Church. Other Polish groups were the Polish Ladies Auxiliary of the Polish Veterans Hall and the St. Hedwig's Rosary Society, both of which Zenia Kolodziejczak took part in. Stefan Malish gathered in the hall "Dnipro" on the weekends and became involved in a Ukrainian soccer club. Sports were a large component of community life across the board. Joseph Filletti, originally from Malta, notes that he got involved in baseball and hockey with the Park League, as well as basketball, soccer, and a few others. Activities for youth, as covered extensively in the Ukrainian Weekly, a newspaper printed in America and distributed widely across Canada, became quite important. As such, language schools were opened for children, and later expanded for older youth (Events in the Life). Other well-loved events were dances, often with the folk dances traditional to the respective culture.
A big influence on Oshawa's Polish community and recipient of the Order of Canada, Jan Drygala was involved in 26 Polish and Canadian organizations. These included: being the president of the General Sikorski Polish Veterans Association, the chair of the building committee that built one of the Polish halls, a Canadian representative for Polish exiles, and a board member of the Victorian Order of Nurses. He was also involved with the Royal Canadian Legion, the Emergency Measures Organization, the Community Citizenship Council, and many more Polish community enterprises (Events in the Life). Finally, beginning in 1960, he got in touch with Jo Adwinkle of the Oshawa Times and undertook with her the idea of organizing an ethnic festival in Oshawa. Due to this early involvement, he was named an honourary director of the Oshawa Folk Arts Council (OFAC) and has an award named after him that is given to the best dance group (Events in the Life). A picture of one of the later events put on by OFAC can be seen in one of our earlier posts on Oshawa's diverse cultural communities.
References
Luciuk, Lubomyr Y. Searching for Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada, and the Migration of Memory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
Poszwa, Rev. Stanislaw. Events in the Life of St. Hedwig's Parish and the Polish Community in Oshawa. Translated by Helen Miklaszewski. Brantford: Bialas Printing Limited, 1997.
Luciuk, Lubomyr Y. Searching for Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada, and the Migration of Memory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
Poszwa, Rev. Stanislaw. Events in the Life of St. Hedwig's Parish and the Polish Community in Oshawa. Translated by Helen Miklaszewski. Brantford: Bialas Printing Limited, 1997.
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