Traces of the Polish presence are scattered all over the world. They can be found even in the remotest corners, for example in one of Canada's prairie provinces, Manitoba. Poles arriving there as early as the early 19th century Arriving there from the early 19th century, Poles gathered their communities around parishes they founded and churches they built or took over from previous settlers. One of the first such buildings is St Elizabeth's Church in Polonia.

History of the church

The St. Elisabeth Church in Polonia (rural commune of Rosedale), which still exists today, was built by Polish settlers in 1902. It is not, however, the first church in the area. An earlier church was built in 1887 and served the groups of Slovaks and Hungarians who originally settled in the area and came from the then Austro-Hungarian monarchy. A memorial in the nearby cemetery bears witness to the existence of this first church. The village, then called Huns Valley, was gradually settled by Polish immigrants coming mainly from Greater Poland. Their steady influx made them the most numerous national group in the area. In 1917, about 100 Polish families lived here. In 1930, the village was given the name Polonia, which is still valid today.

St Elisabeth's Church is a wooden building with a modest single nave and a tower on the axis of the façade. Both externally and internally, it is virtually devoid of decoration, which, however, also appears to be typical of other churches built by Polish immigrants in the prairie provinces of Canada. Elements of furnishings associated with the Polish settlers have been preserved in the church to this day, the most important of which is a copy of the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa placed in the main altar.

Contemporary history of the parish

St Elizabeth's Church was once a vibrant centre of the local community, hosting both religious and secular events and a Polish library. Nowadays, apart from Christmas Day mass and funerals, no regular services are held in the church. It is the site of annual pilgrimages to the Grotto of Our Lady, designed in 1959 by Fr Waclaw Plucinski.

Polish settlement in Canada

The first records of Polish presence on Canadian territory date back to the late 17th century. According to the most recent findings, the first to arrive in this land was Andrzej Wilk, son of a merchant from Gdańsk, who settled in Québec City in 1686. The reasons for Poles settling in Canada include both political reasons (emigration after the collapse of the national uprisings in the 19th century) and economic reasons (seeking better living conditions).

The date of the beginning of the mass emigration of Poles to Canada can be assumed to be 1858, when a group of settlers from Kaszuby, an area under Prussian rule at the time, arrived in the province of Ontario. They were mainly peasants and unskilled farmers, tempted by promises of land that was scarce in their homeland. They formed several dense settlements, notable among them the town of Wilno, where the first Polish parish in Canada was established in 1875.

A campaign by the Canadian government and the Canadian Pacific Railway at the end of the 19th century to encourage settlement in Canada's prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta contributed to the continuation of Polish settlement.

Polish pioneers in the province of Manitoba

The first Poles in Manitoba are believed to be 10 former soldiers of the De Meuron Swiss Regiment, who joined Lord Selkirk - the founder of the Red River Valley settlement - in 1817. Although few of them remained permanently in the colony, this fact is worth noting in the context of the role of Polish settlers in the process of community building in the province of Manitoba. The newcomers arriving on the Canadian prairies at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should be considered the basis of the contemporary Polish community. They were mainly unskilled people of rural origin (from the areas of Wielkopolska and Galicia), who found work in Canada as agricultural labourers and domestic servants, building railways or clearing forests.

In 1901, there were 1 674 Poles living in Manitoba, and already ten years later, this number had risen to 12 321. Until the 1970s, the city of Winnipeg, the capital of the province of Manitoba, was considered the second largest Polish community in Canada.

Organisation of religious life on the Canadian prairies

The centre of the social and religious life of the Polish community in Canada was formed in large numbers at the beginning of the 20th century by parishes, schools and associations of various kinds. The first chapels and churches were built with funds obtained from railway lines, local companies, funds donated by the bishop or one of the religious orders, as well as from collections made among the faithful. In most of the parishes, pastoral ministry was carried out by priests from the Oblate congregation.

The city of Winnipeg was the centre of the Polish community in the province of Manitoba. Since 1898, there had been a Holy Spirit Parish in Winnipeg, and since 1908, a Polish Catholic Newspaper. This parish was intended not only to serve the immigrants settled in the city, but also to be a base for the oblates carrying out pastoral ministry among the Poles on the prairies. Winnipeg priests often travelled hundreds of kilometres to reach the faithful. The first Polish priest in the area was Fr Wojciech Kulawy OMI, who provided itinerant ministry to some 1,000 compatriots scattered across the prairies in centres in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.