Unveiled in 1980, the Katyn Memorial in Canada is widely regarded as the first public memorial worldwide to commemorate the victims of the Katyn massacre, erected on a small square in the city of Toronto. 

Thirty-six years after the murders committed on Stalin’s orders, the XXIII General Assembly of the Canadian Polish Congress, meeting in St Catharines from 12 to 16 October 1974, adopted a resolution to erect a Katyn memorial to honour the victims of this unimaginable atrocity.

Among the most persistent initiators was Tadeusz Kazimierz Walkowski: a colonel in the Polish Army’s Controller Corps, formerly an officer of the 14th Cavalry Regiment in Lwów (Lviv in present-day Ukraine) and a graduate of the Higher School of Foreign Trade. His brother, Władysław, was killed at Katyn. Colonel Walkowski died in Edmonton and is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery.

A Committee for the Construction of the Katyn Memorial in Canada was formed to carry the project forward. It was chaired by Lucjan Conrad, who played a leading role in securing permission for a prominent Toronto site, ensuring the memorial would enter the city’s visual landscape. A design competition attracted fifty-two entries. From the shortlisted proposals, the concept by Professor Tadeusz Marian Janowski was selected. Living in exile since the 1960s, Janowski had trained as an architect and later taught in North America: at Iowa State University in Ames, subsequently at the University of Winnipeg, and later again in Syracuse.

Owing to the efforts of the Canadian Polish Congress, Toronto City Council approved construction on city-owned land. Despite objections from several embassies, most notably the Soviet, the Katyn Memorial became the first of its kind permitted in a public space, on a small square on the city’s west side where King Street West meets Roncesvalles Avenue and Queen Street West meets The Queensway. 

Another supportive measure by the Canadian authorities made donations to the “Katyn Memorial Fund” tax-exempt.

In its “Proclamation to the Polish Community”, the Committee appealed: “Our aim is not only to honour the memory of the many Poles murdered by the Soviet authorities. The Katyn Memorial is also intended to serve as a warning to living generations and to bear witness to their duty to defend human dignity and freedom against the brutal, cruel violence of hostile political forces. The lust for power, hatred and tyranny must not be allowed to violate our most precious moral values or respect for human life. Your donations will make it possible to realise the intention to erect the monument. May your generosity for this purpose measure up to our grief at the violent loss of life on ‘inhuman soil’ suffered by so many of our defenceless compatriots, and to our contempt for this despicable crime.”

Manufactured pro bono by the Canadian firm Milne & Nicholls, the Katyn Memorial was unveiled on 14 September 1980. Among those present were Cardinal Władysław Rubin, visiting from Rome, Stefan Sobońniewski, president of the World Federation of Polish Veterans’ Associations, and Władysław Gertler, president of the Canadian Polish Congress. More than ten thousand people attended, including representatives of Polish-Canadian organisations with their banners, as well as Hungarian, Lithuanian and Latvian communities. 

The memorial was unveiled by three people whose loved ones were murdered in the Katyn Forest: J. Puchalik of Toronto, K. Ptaszyński of Montreal, and M. Wiązek of Mississauga.

The monument consists of a black, monolithic block cleaved by a wide fissure. On its sides appears an inscription in Polish and English: “To the memory of the 15,000 Polish prisoners of war who disappeared in 1940 from the camps at Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov on the territory of the USSR. More than four thousand victims murdered by officers of the Soviet secret police were later discovered in mass graves at Katyn near Smolensk.” 

An urn set in the base holds documents relating to the monument’s construction together with the foundation act, which concludes: “We commit the souls of the murdered to the protection of the Queen of the Polish Crown, Our Lady of Częstochowa, and may the memory of this crime remain for ever in the hearts of the Polish Nation and the Polish community scattered throughout the globe.”

Anna Stanisz, a curator associated with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, has offered a succinct reading of the monument’s symbolism on the ArtworxTO website: “A block cracked in half by a powerful blow. (…) This monument represents a very deep wound inflicted on the Polish nation. (…) This abstract form very strongly symbolises the unity that was shattered by the power of the crime. I think it is a very strong symbol. It is very minimalist, but there is a certain roughness to it. There’s this contrast of the smoothness of the solid, this almost feeling that something so strong and so solid could fail. But it did, because the blow was so strong and the wound so deep. But what’s interesting, if you think about it, I think there’s also hope there. And that’s what I like about this memorial, because the very fact that this memorial exists at all is already hope. And then you can feel that this block is not completely broken. At the very bottom is the part that holds it together, and there is a place from which to start rebuilding it.” 

For the Polish-Canadian community, the memorial serves as a gathering place on national occasions; each April, on Katyn Victims’ Remembrance Day, a commemorative ceremony is held.