Wilno | |
|---|---|
 Wilno, Ontario. | |
  Wilno  Wilno | |
| Coordinates: 45°30′41″N77°33′37″W / 45.51139°N 77.56028°W | |
| Country |  Canada |
| Province |  Ontario |
| County | Renfrew |
| Municipality | Madawaska Valley |
| Settled | 1858 |
| Time zone | UTC-5 (EST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
| Postal Code | K0J |
| Area code | 613 |
| Website | www |
Wilno is a settlement in the Township Municipality of Madawaska Valley, Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada.
Wilno is nestled in the rolling, picturesque terrain of the Madawaska valley which was largely shaped during the demise of the Laurentide Ice Sheet at the end of the last North American Ice Age.
Wilno is the first and oldest Polish-Kashubian settlement in Canada. Most of the original settlers in the area came around 1858 from the Polish cultural region of Kashubia. (Prussia had annexed the region from Poland in 1795, but it is now part of Poland again.) They are an integral part of the Kashubian diaspora. [1]
One of the reasons that they chose the area was that the landscape reminded them of their original homes.
Wilno's namesake was the city of Vilnius, known in Polish as Wilno, which was then in Russian Empire in area that used to belong to Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and is now the capital of Lithuania. The city was a birthplace of Reverend Ludwik Dembski, who was a prominent community spiritual leader and town founder, who would not have wanted the town named after himself. Therefore, the townsfolk, grateful for his contributions to their town, may have suggested the name of Wilno. [2] [3]
The St. Stanislaus Kostka Church was built in 1875, destroyed by fire in 1936 and rebuilt as Saint Mary - Our Lady of Czestochowa. later renamed St. Mary's Catholic Church. The first general store and post office was initially operated by Adam Prince, who became the community's first postmaster in 1885; the settlement was initially named Princetown before being renamed Wilno. Flora's Store was started by Flora Bank in 1937; it was destroyed by fire in 1940 but rebuilt. The business went through several owners and changes but was closed down in 2015. [2] [4]
In 1894, the Canadian Atlantic Railroad arrived in the Madawaska Valley. [2] Previously, John Rudolphus Booth's Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway ran through the town mainly serving the lumber industry. The first hotel near the Wilno rail station was the "Stopping Place." Anew owner added more rooms and a dining room, and renamed it the "Exchange Hotel." Subsequent owners modified the property, which became the "Wilno Tavern" in 1979 and the "Wilno Tavern Restaurant" more recently. [2] The restaurant remained in operation as of 2020, and Corinne Higgins has owned it since 1981. [5]
The former train route has now been redeveloped into a recreational path. The former train station has an early settler building and museum presenting the early history of the town. The museum and open air wooden skansen (Polish: "open-air museum") contain the history of the first Kashubian people as well as their immigration to Canada, freedom and, after many hardships, their settlement journey to the Wilno area. The Polish Kashub Heritage Museum & Skansen opened in 2002. It is open to visitors during July and August. In May, the annual Kashub Day event is held here. [6] [7] [8]
A professor of Slavic Languages, Jan L. Perkowski, reported on rumours of vampires in the Kashubian culture in a study completed in 1969, and published in a paper titled "Vampires, Dwarves, and Witches among the Ontario Kashubs". [9] According to the professor, the Ontario Kashubs believed that one "must open the tomb of the vampire at midnight, and drive a long nail into his forehead, or, better still, cut off his head with a sharp spade and put it between his feet....". [10] In 1973, a Catholic priest in Wilno told CBC News that "We get a big laugh out of it, we know the people who have manufactured the story just by reading it... My impression is that [Perkowski] probably stuck a microphone under their noses and to get rid of him they'd made up these tales". [10]
In April 2010, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk agreed to visit Wilno but an airplane crash, the Smolensk air disaster, that took the life of President Lech Kaczyński, and that of 95 others, led to cancellation of the plan. [11] Tusk visited Wilno in May 2012, commenting that he was the "first Polish prime minister to meet with the minority living there and cultivating its customs since the 19th century". [12] [13] He toured the Catholic cemetery and later said, "We felt as if we were visiting the graves of our dearest, our relatives, our beloved, because these names, these figures, those stories were our stories." [14]
In September 2015 three women –Carol Culleton, 66, Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, and Nathalie Warmerdam, 46 –were murdered in and near Wilno. The killer, Basil Borutski, was convicted of the crimes in 2017. [15]
The government of Ontario erected a historical plaque in Wilno, providing these specifics: [16] [17]
The first group of Polish immigrants to Canada, some 300 in number, established a settlement in this area in 1864. Adverse social conditions and political unrest in their partitioned homeland had encouraged them to leave. They cleared the land and rapidly established a thriving agricultural community. During the 1880s the village founded here was called Wilno after the birthplace of the Reverend Ludwik Dembski one of their spiritual leaders. In 1875 the parish of Wilno was organized and a chapel dedicated to the polish saint Stanislaus Kostka, was built. The Canadian Atlantic Railway linked Wilno with Ottawa in 1894. This district, which received a new wave of Polish immigrants in the early 1900s, retains much of its cultural heritage.
This supper has been an annual event since 1936. Approximately 2,000 people have been served each year during Labour Day Weekend. The food is authentic Kaszebe–Polish fare; one source states that it includes "boiled chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh vegetables, such as carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, pickles, and of course choices of apple, raisin, and coconut cream pies". [18] In 2019, some 3,000 meals were served by volunteers; the 550 pies were also baked by volunteers. [19]
The Kashubians, also known as Cassubians or Kashubs, are a Lechitic ethnic group native to the historical region of Pomerania, including its eastern part called Pomerelia, in north-central Poland. Their settlement area is referred to as Kashubia. They speak the Kashubian language, which is classified as a separate language closely related to Polish.
Kashubian or Cassubian is a West Slavic language belonging to the Lechitic subgroup along with Polish and Silesian. Although often classified as a language in its own right, it is sometimes viewed as a dialect of Polish.
Kościerzyna is a town in Kashubia in Gdańsk Pomerania region, northern Poland, with 23,327 inhabitants as of June 2023. It has been the capital of Kościerzyna County in Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999; previously it was in Gdańsk Voivodeship from 1975 to 1998.
Jan Louis Perkowski is a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. He has three consecutive degrees including a PhD from Harvard University. He currently resided in Charlottesville until his death in 2023.
Polish Canadians are citizens of Canada with Polish ancestry, and Poles who immigrated to Canada from abroad. At the 2016 Census, there were 1,106,585 Canadians who claimed full or partial Polish heritage.
Barry's Bay is a community in the township of Madawaska Valley, Ontario, Canada, located two hours west of Ottawa on the shores of Kamaniskeg Lake, with a 2016 population of 1,259.
Żukowo is a town in Kartuzy County, in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of northern Poland in the cultural region of Kashubia, with 6,236 inhabitants (2005). It is located along the Radunia river in the historic Pomerelia, about 19 km (12 mi) southwest of Gdańsk.
Aleksander Majkowski was a Polish-Kashubian writer, poet, journalist, editor, activist, and physician. He was the most important figure in the Kashubian movement before World War II. He was the editor of "Gryf" and author of the greatest Kashubian novel Żëcé i przigodë Remusa, and The History of the Kashubs.
Sianowo is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kartuzy, within Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi) north-west of Kartuzy and 36 km (22 mi) west of the regional capital Gdańsk. It is located on the eastern shore of Sianowskie Lake, within the ethnocultural region of Kashubia in the historic region of Pomerania.
Wiele is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Karsin, within Kościerzyna County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately 5 kilometres (3 mi) north-west of Karsin, 23 km (14 mi) south of Kościerzyna, and 71 km (44 mi) south-west of the regional capital Gdańsk. It is located in the Zabor Land, a southern part of the ethnocultural region of Kashubia in the historic region of Pomerania.
A vjesci is a vampire in Polish folklore. According to legend, some people are born with the destiny of becoming vjesci, discernable by a caul located on the newborn's head. In order to prevent these individuals from becoming a vjesci, the caul was removed, dried, ground and fed to the person on their seventh birthday. Typically, vjesci were said to be indistinguishable from humans, although in some stories, they had a ruddy complexion and an excitable nature. At the time of their death, a vjesci would refuse to take the sacrament. Their body would cool closely, and their limbs would remain limber. Their lips and cheeks would remain red, and spots of blood often appeared under their fingernails and on the face.
The Basilica of Saint Stanislaus Kostka is a historic church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Winona in Winona, Minnesota, United States, and a prominent fixture on the city's skyline. Within the diocese it is known as Saint Stan's. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 as Church of St. Stanislaus–Catholic. It was designated as a Minor Basilica of the Roman Catholic Church on November 10, 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI.
Józef Franciszek Darzyn Ciemiński was a Polish-born Roman Catholic priest. He emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1881 and was ordained as a Priest in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1895. He was involved with numerous Polish Catholic parishes during his lifetime including the now closed troubled Parish of Saints Peter and Paul in Duluth, Minnesota, and the parish of Holy Cross in Minneapolis.
The Kashubian diaspora resulted from the emigration of Kashubians mainly in two waves occurring in the second half of the 19th century. The majority of Kashubian emigrants settled in the United States; others emigrated to Canada and Brazil. An online genealogical project, "The Great Kashubian Migration," is devoted to tracking their settlement patterns. Their reasons for emigration varied. Until the Franco-Prussian War, Kashubians emigrated primarily for economic reasons. After the Franco-Prussian War and especially due to the Kulturkampf, Kashubian emigration accelerated as socio-political factors came into play. In his 1899 book, Statystyka ludnosci kaszubskiej, the Kashubophile linguist and sociologist Stefan Ramult estimated that 130,700 Kashubians were living in the Americas.
Hieronim Derdowski, Kashubian-Polish intellectual and activist, was born to Kashubian parents in the Pomeranian village of Wiele. By the time Derdowski emigrated to the United States in 1885, he had already studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, been repeatedly incarcerated by the German authorities, and edited a newspaper in the city of Torun. At the time, however, Derdowski was better known as a poet. Within two years of reaching the United States he became editor of the Winona, Minnesota Polish-language newspaper Wiarus. In this role he gained a reputation as a strong voice for the Polish-American community, also known as Polonia.
Marian Jeliński was born in Siemirowice, in 1949. Jeliński is a recognized authority in bee diseases and an active member of the Kashubian community. He is involved in a range of activities focusing on the preservation of the Kashubian language and culture. Jeliński is also known for his support of Kashubian embroidery and building bridges between Kashubian communities in Poland and Canada. He and his wife, Alicja, have two sons and currently live in Żukowo, near Gdańsk, Poland.
Wiarus was the name of a Polish-language newspaper published in Winona, Minnesota from 1886 to 1893 and 1895 to 1919; in 1893 it was renamed Katolik, but reverted to its original name in 1895. Although Winona's Polish community was known at the time as the "Kashubian Capital of America," Wiarus was published in the "good" Polish spoken in Warsaw and Krakow. Wiarus also provided printing services for Winona's Kashubian Polish community. From 1886 to 1902, Wiarus was edited by the famed Kashubian-born poet and journalist Hieronim Derdowski. In its heyday, Wiarus was said to be the most widely circulated Polish-language newspaper in the United States.
Aloysius J. Rekowski (1921-2006) was a Canadian Roman Catholic priest, scriptural scholar, historian and translator. He was born to Kashubian-Canadian parents on October 23, 1921, in Wilno, Ontario, and died in Toronto, Ontario, on June 17, 2006.
Paul Joseph Breza, Roman Catholic priest and Kashubian American activist, was born in Winona, Minnesota on June 23, 1937, the son of Joseph Peter and Alice Seraphine (Pehler) Breza, both of whom were descendants of Kashubian immigrants from Bytów, Poland. He was educated at Saint Stanislaus Kostka School, Cotter High School and Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.
The Kashubian Association is a Poland-based association for Kashubians with the aim of developing the national, civic and cultural awareness of Kashubians from around the world. In particular, it is calling for recognizing the Kashubian as an ethnic minority in Poland: in the current Polish law on minorities, the only right the Kashubians enjoy is the status of their language as regional.
