Not only about flying - Paperback

by Anna Zurakowski (Editor), Marieta Brzeski (Translator), George Zurakowski (Translator)

Next to Kazimierz Gzowski, Janusz Żurakowski is, without a doubt, one of the most famous Poles in Canadian history. In the hands of a professional journalist or biographer, his life would have made for sensational storytelling. As related by himself to his own wife, as retrieved from the dusky recesses of the twentieth century with the aid of her unerring memory, the sensational events that compose his life assume the aspect of the everyday, the most ordinary. But do not let the modest character of this narrative deceive you. For many years, this "impossible pilot" - as has been written about him - and true pioneer led an extraordinary life, poised often on the edge. His adventures in flying took on many different forms: beginning with his fledgling glider flights, which left our hero with a long scar on his skull, through the death-defying battles high in the skies over Poland and England during which he shot down a couple of German planes and then had to parachute out to save his own skin, up to his spectacular postwar achievements, shattering the world's speed record, executing acrobatic cartwheels with the jet engine turned off, and test-flying nearly 100 new models of aircraft, including what would become a symbol of national aspiration foiled and an object of fetishism, the supersonic interceptor, CF-105 Avro Arrow. Each of these daring flights could have been this pilot's last, like the one nearby Ajax that ended with his catapulting himself from the CF-100 all-weather fighter jet and breaking his leg. Even today, the 87-year-old author of these memoirs leads a rather unconventional life in the wilds of the Canadian Shield, as he takes his daily solitary strolls through the forest, clambers up the countless hills, or fells trees in the surrounding wood. The ever-present danger of wartime and his years working as an experimental pilot were transformed more than 40 years ago when he answered another call - that of the Canadian pioneer. At the age of 44, a few months before John Diefenbaker's Conservative government liquidated the Avro Arrow project, Żurakowski retired from flying, but continued to work as a coordinator for the test flight and engineering departments. When the Malton plant was shut down on Black Friday, February 20, 1959, he was offered several lucrative positions at American aeronautical companies. He decided, however, to remain in Canada. Along with wife Anna, he opened a tourist resort in the heart of the Ontario Kaszuby, not far from Barry's Bay. Over the years, Kartuzy Lodge be-came a kind of small homeland for several hundred Polish-Canadian families from Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and even the United States. It has hosted entire generations of "new" Canadians under its roof. Kartuzy Lodge is also the headquarters of the Polish Heritage Institute Kaszuby, whose heart and soul is Anna Żurakowska. Janusz Żurakowski continues to help his wife run the lodge, fixing the equipment, bringing in supplies from Barry's Bay, cutting the grass in the meadow, and grading the road named "Arrow Drive". Twice a week, by tradition, he and Anna serve tea to the guests. And often late into the night, he partakes in animated discussions with visitors and flying enthusiasts - and more and more of them ask about his extraordinary past. We are conveying this singular document into the Reader's hand, certain that it will become required reading in the multi-volume history of the Polish Diaspora in Canada. The life of this gentleman, one of Canada's heroes though a Pole in his heart, is a story that not only is worthy of being told, but stands as an example for generations - young and old - of Poles and Canadians.