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Poles, Kashubs, Polish-Canadians, and a History Geek:
Josh Blank, historian and a member of Polish American Historical Association in a conversation with Marta Cieślak and Anna Müller
You’re a Canadian historian, who explores Polish and Kashubian experiences in Canada. What sparked and shaped your scholarly interests?
From an early age, familial, regional history and stories were passed on to me by my matrilinear relatives (the Glofcheskies, Shallas and Etmanskis), many of whom were teachers and quite involved in church activities and Etmanski family reunions. So, I think I was primed to find history fascinating by the time I started selecting electives in high school. The fact that they hoarded photos, newspapers, and other objects of significance from regional events greatly assisted some of my graduate and post-graduate projects.
As far as those who piqued my scholarly interests, a professor at the University of Ottawa, Sharon Anne Cook, broadened my horizons by introducing me to social history in her course “Vice and Virtue in late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Canada”. Then, when moving to Carleton University, Bruce S. Elliott and John C. Walsh further accelerated my development with their suggestions and guidance for which I wish to say, “thank you!”, once again. If I were to extend this question a little bit further, I would say that Timothy Cooley’s Making Music in the Polish Tatras was also an influential read when conducting research.
Dr. Ron Glofcheskie (my uncle, in the background of the picture), while studying at Jagiellonian University, researched the roots of the Glofcheskie family in Poland and their crest. He later made sweaters as Christmas gifts for family members c1989. The "Kłopoteks" of Głowczewice had an estate in Pomerania as early as 1570 and they received a coat of arms in 1700. By the late 19th century, the family of my great grandfather (Jan J.Głowczewski), moved to Liniewo and then immigrated, through Ellis Island, to Canada eventually settling near Barry's Bay, Ontario in 1907. My younger brother Aaron (on the left), is clearly more interested in his toy truck (he is now a successful mechanic in Cranbrook, British Columbia) while I - the history geek - stand proud wearing my ancestral coat of arms sweater.
In this series, we’re exploring the meanings of what Polish American implies. Your work opens so many possibilities of redefining the traditional meaning of “Polish American,” which for decades focused on the presumably homogenous identity of Polish-speaking Christian migrants and their descendants in the United States. But what about the other meaning of American, as in relating to the Americas? And how do you see a relationship between Polishness and a Kashubian identity? In short, how do you see a relationship between Polish Americanand Polish Canadian and Kashubian Canadian? And are Polish Canadian and Kashubian Canadian in any way related to each other?
Thank you for your generous words… and for inviting a Canadian who is “1/14” Polish American to contribute to this feature (my great grandmother on my father’s side, Ludwiga Dudek, was born in Chicopee, Massachusetts in 1897 shortly after her family left Galicia. A few years later, in 1905, the Dudeks moved to Wilno, Ontario).
Indeed, Polish migration to Canada has transpired in fits and starts over the last 160+ years. Within these waves, each person’s experiences and sense of identity and ethnicity is influenced by many factors. Perhaps it is best summarized by Jan K. Fedorowicz, who sadly passed away recently, in Republic of Nobles: there are “a host of different Polish cultures, defined by region, by social class, by historical tradition, by the time in which particular groups emigrated from Poland, and even by the foreign models imposed or adopted at different times.” The same can be said for American Polonia even if separated from Polish Canadians by the 49th parallel.
While some tensions regarding degrees of ethnicity exist between clusters within the Canadian diaspora, owing to the factors mentioned by Fedorowicz, there are also shared experiences and foes which can bring clusters together in Canada and in the Americas. For example, many migrants from the same communities and regions boarded late 19th century ships in Hamburg and Bremen for similar reasons despite the fact that their destinations were different (e.g. Quebec, New York, Galveston, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc.). Further, Solidarity era migrants in the Polish Canadians and Polish American diaspora share some of the same push factors regardless of where they settled in North America.
Additionally, whether an individual defines themselves as Polish or Kashubian (solely or hyphenated), there are common factors or events that unite clusters together in Canada. Such events are the annual festivals and gatherings in Wilno, Ontario. Prior to these gatherings, before the late 1990s, few opportunities existed for get-togethers across eras and groups. As a result, what it means to be in either group, I think, is continually being negotiated and redefined as each person discovers more about their past and interacts with others in the diaspora at such events. There are a few who, when trying to carve out a Kashubian identity separate from Polish, trumpet separatist differences but many more who wish to focus on shared elements and positive promotions instead.
How has your 2016 book Creating Kashubia: History, Memory, and Identity in Canada’s First Polish Community (McGill-Queen’s University) been received by the Kashubian communities in Canada? Have you heard any reactions from Kashubs in Poland?
Quite a few residents and descendants have passed along congratulatory messages, remarks, and compliments over the past few years and many more have conveyed them to my parents, who still live in Barry’s Bay. There are a handful of people, though, that I can think of in the Wilno area and in Northern Poland who will probably never read the book, since they have very rigid notions of identity as a non-hyphenated Kashub and a set agenda for the promotion of identity. But that comes with any project. Unfortunately, the reach of the book in Poland, while available in a host of institutions and libraries, is limited to those who can read and digest a scholarly book written in English.
The success of the book has resulted in several invitations for lectures at post-secondary institutions, societies and organizations, podcasts in the Ottawa Valley and an invitation to contribute to a Polish book on Kaszubian emigration over the past few years. Given that there were no hecklers at these events and no holes in my tires, I like to think it has been well received.
Five of eight Shalla siblings (Adolf aka "Ed", Genevieve aka Sr. Conrad, Teresa, Zita and Edward) at an Etmanski family reunion in Barry's Bay, c1990. Hundreds of Etmanski family descendants from all across North America attended these reunions in the 1980s and 90s. Their mother, Elizabeth Etmanski, was featured in a 2021 article I wrote in Historical Studies in Education.
Can you tell us a bit more about those with “very rigid notions of identity” and their agenda? What does the agenda imply?
Without going down a rabbit hole of “alternative facts,” one resident of Ontario – who calls himself “defender of Kashubian identity” and sells scores of Kashubian themed flags, clothing, hockey jerseys, discovery tours to “Kashubia Europe” as well as a self-published book – has stated “out with the word ‘Polish’” in favour of “everything Kashub. Kashub, Kashub, Kashub.”. Further claims of “identity theft” (which he is “a victim and a survivor of”) and persecution by the colonizers (the church, Prussia, Poland and Germany) have been tossed around, as well as the claim that Kashubia, Europe (not Kashubia in Poland), is a “nation without statehood.” In trying to rewrite history, this individual ignores the Polish/Kashubian/Galician/Kociewian hybridity of the descendants from the first settlement region in Ontario across many decades. A few others of the same mind in Northern Poland, who are sometimes the beneficiaries of business and tour dollars, also avoid hybridity and push the idea of a Kashubian nation. They have also been known to subtly scorn tourists who don’t fully believe in their singular notion of ethnic identity. Who knows, they may try to start an independence movement soon, too!
Recently you published a fascinating study on rural single classroom teachers at the turn of the 20th century. Some time ago you explored how parish picnics reflected and shaped immigrant identities in Canada. In both cases, you’ve concluded that gender and class were as important elements of those stories as ethnicities, if not more important. As a scholar of immigrant and heritage identities, how do you reconcile all those different identity building categories in your thinking about identity?
Well, as a social historian, I’d say that the ol’ triumvirate of gender, class, ethnicity always comes into play when looking at (or deeper into) narratives, stories and lives. Having a long line of strong willed and educated females in the family also gave me perspectives contrary to the known and male dominated narratives of the group or what was written by those external to the community in church, political, general histories and national narratives. So, once again, these influences during my formative years – and in studies since – have served me well when bringing missing voices and perspectives to the fore.
We’re talking as the news outlets continue to publish new reports of the violent history of residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada. Can you tell us whether Canadian-produced immigration scholarship has grappled with the fact that immigrants have been part of the settler colonial state that Canada is? If yes, what trends do you see? [*This is still rare in the US scholarship on immigration although more and more especially legal scholars are taking up these issues].
Momentum on this is gathering here too. One monograph that comes to mind is Ryan Eyford’s White Settler Reserve: New Iceland and the Colonization of the Canadian West (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016). We shared the same M.A. thesis advisor, although at different times, at Carleton University (Bruce S. Elliott) and I know Ryan was digging into the Icelanders’ experiences with those of the Cree, Ojibwe and Metis whom they displaced long before he was able to publish this book in 2016. It remains to be seen, though, how and if more ethnic groups and ethnic historians will reflect on their part in this venture and whether filiopietism will hinder, prevent or enhance further studies.
As far as the first settlement region for the 1858 group that left partitioned Poland, they settled on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin nation. According to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Indigenous people had title to the land and if the Crown wanted to settle it, an agreement was necessary. Much of Eastern Ontario, including the parliament buildings in Ottawa, is on unceded territory. So, technically, the lots created and settled – even if they did not have Indigenous settlements on them – along the Opeongo Colonization Road were illegal given the proclamation. A land claim regarding this chunk of land was put forth in the 1980s has been slowly making its way through the system.
What are you working on right now?
Absolutely nothing… and it feels wonderful! After publishing articles in 2019, 2020 and 2021, writing a book chapter in 2020, submitting ~30 typed pages of sites for PAHA’s forthcoming “Guidebook to Historical Sites…” and with COVID shutdowns, leads for potential pieces have been relegated to the bottom of the stack. My priorities have shifted to looking after my young children since daycares and schools were shut down in Ontario multiple times in 2021. I have made some headway, though, with research into my wife’s matrilineal ancestors. Several were Quakers who moved from Pennsylvania to the Whitchurch-Stouffville area north of Toronto in the early 1800s. While my Polish-Kashub and Kim’s Dutch ancestors have been well documented, I want to ensure that my daughters have a sense of where more of their maternal ancestors were and were from.
We cannot not ask about the impact that the pandemic has had on your life. You’re a teacher, your wife is a nurse, and you two have two young children. Would you care to share with us your thoughts on the last year and a half or so from the perspective of your personal experience?
This is the hardest question yet! I say that because I’ve been wondering whether to be detailed or short and succinct.
It has not been easy for any of us, and I don’t want to relieve too much from the past year. The school shutdowns here in Ontario were the longest in Canada. Fortunately, Ottawans have been good about rolling up their sleeves as 85% of the population 12 and older are fully vaccinated, 89% have one dose (as of October 17, 2021) and we’re back in classrooms!
However, I do want to say this: be a superhero… wear a mask and be a good neighbor… get vaccinated!