​My father passed away a few days before Christmas in 2023 at the age of 99. His longevity was unexpected. He was a sickly child, and his parents sent him to a sanatorium when he was eleven years old. The doctors told my grandparents it was unlikely my father would live past twenty. Medical science has evolved and come a long way since the 1930s. 

However, some things never change, including the core principles that my father adhered to throughout his life and instilled in me. From the earliest times that I could remember as a child, my father taught me the importance and value of liberty, democracy, justice, logic, critical thinking, honesty, truth, and the difference between right and wrong. In my youth, I sometimes challenged his resolutions. However, throughout the rest of my life, whenever I faced a difficult choice, I reflected on his teachings and am grateful for the moral compass he gave me. 

My father had a map of the world on the wall in his study at home. My earliest recollections include his pointing to the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. and telling me how lucky we are to live on this side of the Iron Curtain. After having survived two decades of Nazi and Soviet occupation in Poland, he told me that the totalitarian system was so suffocating that he would have had a nervous breakdown had it not been for a Ford Foundation Scholarship in 1959 that enabled him to escape to the West. For that opportunity to live a free life, he was always grateful. Only when I visited relatives in Poland in the 1970s did I understand what he was talking about. 

My father initially studied law to be a lawyer like his father. However, all questions of justice were subordinate to the will of the Communist Party, and he reverted to the study of his first love, philosophy and logic. It’s not easy to be a child of a professor of logic. As a child, I remember my father listening to me once as I explained my ground-breaking insights into a matter of great importance. At some point, he interrupted me, told me that I was talking nonsense, and listed the numerous fallacies I had committed. His bringing to my attention the need to make sense was among the more profound lessons that I learned from him, although it was not a particularly effective inducement to engage in further enunciations of my youthful discoveries. After taking a course in logic during my undergraduate studies and graduating from law school, our discussions were on a more even playing field.

One of my father’s favourite subjects was existentialism. My father frequently reminded me of the need to have meaning in one’s life. As a teenager, he frequently decried what he thought was the shallowness of my life. I did my school homework and had a hard time understanding what he further expected of me, although I knew that seeing me reading Ancient Greek philosophy would probably assuage his concerns. One of the books my father gave me at the time was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. I understood that having a goal increased the likelihood of survival in a concentration camp, but the book did not provide a criterion for determining which goals were worthwhile and which were less so. My father had some views on the topic. Whenever my father met new friends of mine, he would inevitably ask them what they planned to do with their lives. He would base his opinion of my colleagues on their responses. 
One day in Grade 10, I invited a new friend over for a visit. I warned him that if my father was home, he would inevitably ask my friend what he wanted to do with his life. My friend’s father enjoyed watching car races on TV. My friend mistakenly assumed my father would share the same passion. My father was home, and after saying “Hello,” he asked the mandatory question. My classmate responded, “I want to be a racing car driver.” My heart sank. I knew what was coming. After my friend left, my father said, “Your friend is an idiot. Get rid of him.” Fortunately, my father mellowed in his senior years, although he never developed an appreciation for car racing. 

My father began teaching logic at Loyola College in Montreal in 1961. In 1968, he had his first sabbatical. We moved to Edmonton, where I began Grade 1. My father spent the year meeting with professors at the University of Alberta and doing whatever philosophy professors on sabbaticals do, including teaching. My father had several professor friends whose company he greatly enjoyed. They occasionally visited our apartment for discussions I did not understand and went on well beyond my bedtime. However, the visits by Dr. Kazimierz Dąbrowski were the most important ones that took priority over all other activities. My father greatly admired and respected Dr. Dąbrowski. They were close friends. I remember Dr. Dąbrowski was bald and was kind and gentle. The image I had was that he was a very brainy and insightful man in a league of his own. I liked him too, although I had no idea why. Perhaps it was because his demeanour had a soothing effect on me. Perhaps it was because I thought that no matter how many fallacies I had committed, Dr. Dąbrowski would be more forgiving. It was only later that I learned that my father had co-written two books with Dr. Dąbrowski and another co-author. My father was very proud of his collaboration with Dr. Dąbrowski, including the organization of several conferences on the topic of Dr. Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration. 

My father took me on many trips when I was a child. He loved travelling and circled the world. After our stay in Edmonton, I remember driving across North America in a Pontiac Parisienne convertible all the way to the pyramids in Mexico and back to Montreal. We toured Europe together when I was 12. In many cities we visited the philosophy departments of the local universities, where my father sought to learn from available professors what they taught their students. My father enjoyed these encounters. However, I have a memory of a meeting with a professor at a university in one of the Scandinavian capitals that was not as satisfying as the others. I can’t remember what was discussed, but I do remember that behind the professor’s desk there was a huge poster of Karl Marx on the wall.

My father was pretty busy. Besides teaching, he was the Chairman of the Philosophy department for many years, which saddled him with administrative duties. These were compounded when Loyola College merged with Sir George Williams University in 1974, and he became the Chairman of the new joint department. 

In addition, my father was a proud Pole who yearned for Poland to become free of Soviet domination. For many years he was a Vice-President of the Polish Canadian Congress. Besides attending endless meetings, he spent an infinite amount of time on the telephone. If it was in English, it had to do with the University. If it was in Polish, it was about the defeat of communism. 

My father loved reading newspapers and books. However, he was selective. His favourite books were about philosophy, history, and those that tried to explain why the world was the way it was. My father often told me that he was going to write some books on logic and critical thinking. Unfortunately, he never got around to it. Recently, I decided to write and self-publish one on the topics. While writing it, I could not help but think that my father was looking over my shoulder at what I was typing. I dedicated the book to his memory.

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