The Sword and the Snowflake – Chapter the Third
Posted By Randy on November 3, 2010
I was a kid with interests in all areas of science and, by the time I was 8 years old, had a well equipped chemistry lab set up in the basement of the house I grew up in. I had a flair for showmanship and was often asked by my teachers to put on demonstrations of scientific principles and experiments in front of the class. I developed a keen interest in aviation and space travel, following every space flight back in the day. Long before the advent of model rocketry as we know it today, I designed and launched projectiles and tested rocket motors powered by propellants of my own manufacture, leading to a few events that today would be chargeable under several pieces of anti-terror legislation.
By the time I was 16, I had decided to study aerospace engineering and, in the spirit of that, took the private pilot course at the now demised Halifax Flying Club. I could fly a Piper PA-28 before I could drive a car.
The photo at left was taken in June 1975, on the day of my graduation from Lunenburg Junior Senior High School. I had been accepted to study Engineering Physics at Dalhousie University after four years of which I would be off to the Ontario Institute for Aerospace Studies to pursue my dream. But peace broke out in Vietnam and changed everything. Instead of U of T I ended up looking at four years worth of Canada Student Loan debt, the fact that the aerospace industry worldwide was rapidly going tits up (peace is hell), and went into consulting, which led me to the security industry, but I digress. Suffice it to say that the end of the Vietnam War kept me from moving far far away and staying there.
A lot of what one learns at university has nothing to do with attending classes. I was at Dalhousie from 1975 to 1979, and it was while there that I discovered my interest in the art of the sword, a fact that figures prominently in this narrative. If not for that singular interest, things would not have turned out as they did.
9 February 1982: Diana Natalia Kleszczynski is born in the city of Wroclaw, Poland to unmarried parents Izabella and Ryszard. Izabella was employed as an office machine operator, Ryszard was an engineer. The fact that they were not married would have an essential effect on future outcomes.
When he was eight years old, Ryszard was critically injured in a motor vehicle accident that very nearly killed him. He recovered from his injuries and grew up to be a fit, active man who excelled at tennis and guitar. It would be years before it was learned that he had received a transfusion of blood infected with Hepatitis C during emergency treatment following the accident. The disease was so little understood at the time of his diagnosis that it was simply referred to as “Hepatitis non type A, non type B”.
While visibly pregnant with Diana, Izabella was walking on a lonely street when she was attacked from behind by an off-duty soldier of the Polish army. The attack was of a type that could have ended Izabella’s young life, and Diana’s before it even started, but Izabella successfully defended herself and was later able to identify her assailant. The man was arrested, tried, and convicted of the crime, and the Polish government awarded Izabella a significant cash settlement to avoid further embarrassment.
The photo at left shows a glowing Izabella and Ryszard with little Diana, the girl who almost didn’t happen.
Under the Communist regime, raising a child in 1980’s Poland was economically similar to doing the same job in 1940’s Canada. Tolerable, but one yearned for something better. Polish families were strictly controlled in their movements outside the country by ensuring that all members never left together.
Because they were unmarried at the time, Izabella and Ryszard did not share a common surname, and due to yet another seemingly random event, this time a bureaucratic screw up, the name of her father was incorrectly entered on Diana’s birth record. Officially, the Polish government only knew he was one of the many men named Ryszard living in Poland.
The way to Canada was paved.
Hello Randy, I just completed chapters One through Four of “The Sword and the Snowflake” and thoroughly enjoyed them. I would like to help you out, but will only be able to as my memory permits, so it may take some time for that to happen, but I promise to give it some thought over the coming weeks, and we’ll see what I can remember. Some of my earlier memories are quite painful, so I have spent many years trying to forget certain things. But of course there were happy days also in the past. I’ll see what I can do. I know that the things that you would be mostly interested in would be the things that might have prevented Peter ever coming into your life, but I will have to recall all the surrounding
memories as well. Please be patient with me !!
Regards,
Beulah T.
Beulah,
Thank you for having read my Snowflake thread. Obviously you understand the point of “The Sword and the Snowflake.”.
Rather than thinking through painful memories so you can write them down, may I suggest an evening of conversation to discuss some family matters on all sides?
Please let me know here. Diana and I hope for such an occasion of enlightenment.
Randy