Stefan Jacek Michalak

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Good evening, Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot, Radio Gdańsk. I’d like to invite you to listen to “Notes of an Emigrant”, the first part of a series of reports – stories about leaving and coming back to Poland.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Look at this. Can you see it? It lights up for one second, turns off for four. That’s a lantern room, i.e. the most basic function of a lighthouse. The mesh ball over it, that’s the time ball. From the times of Christopher Columbus all navigation took place along well-known coasts. Even during the furthers travels to China or India, the ship was constantly within site of the African coast which was well known... or rather should’ve been well known to the captain. So, the captain knew where they were at any time, because maps were accurate, each detail of the coast was precisely described in what was called a pilot’s book. Pilotage is what it is. And the captain new where they were. When Columbus persuaded the king of Spain to let him sail West, it all ended, because the African coast stayed somewhere behind them and the captain, even if he was the best in the World, if he doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know which way to sail. And after one or two days of travel through the Atlantic, the captain really didn’t know where they were. So, in the end many ships were lost on various shoals, reefs, rocks, and other wonders, so the case was imp... the Five Whistle Bend (pol. Zakręt pięciu gwizdków). That’s where it came from. Once, there were no radios, so ships closing to the bend, from whichever direction, gave a five whistle signal. This was a signal for ships on the other side saying “Caution, we’re sailing here”. That way, they would sail more cautiously. And then, the radio was introduced. Well anyway, problems with navigation were tremendous, so in order to remedy them, the chronometer was invented. A chronometer is a very accurate clock, which when set for a given time at the port, would always be precise. But for a chronometer to be accurate, every self-respecting port had a time ball, which fell exactly at 12:00 local time.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Mr Jacek Michalak is a lighthouse keeper in charge of the lighthouse in Nowy Port. He lived outside of Poland for 45 years. The lighthouse is his passion, and livelihood after he returned, here, in Gdańsk.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: It’s something of my own in Gdańsk, you know, it’s a completely different feeling than e.g. owning a flat in the city. Well, you can, but it’s not the same. Here on the other hand, I have something which is mine and at the same time, something that belongs to all citizens, and I’m very proud of that. Not to mention that this places me somewhere in the cultural circles in Gdańsk which I always missed. So it’s very important to me that I can be of use to others.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Let’s enter the lighthouse then. Higher?

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Yes. You can’t go out to the balcony for safety reasons though.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Oh my, what a view you have.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: And Westerplatte is here.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: It is. Great.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Here, we have a new monument, I mean a “monument” in quotes. “There are three coastlines I like most in Europe: Golden Horn, Gulf of Trieste, and Gdańsk Bay”. Alexander von Humboldt said that in Gdańsk on 14 September 1840.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Would you agree?

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Yes.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Jacek had seen a lot, but the Gdańsk Bay will always be the most beautiful in his eyes, as it reminds him of home. He doesn’t consider himself an emigrant, as he left not because he had to, but because he wanted to. That’s his definition of emigration. Everyone has their own, just like everyone has their own story. Let’s go back to 1966.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Everything was prohibited. You couldn’t do this, you couldn’t do that. You couldn’t do anything. Of course, visiting the lighthouse or anything was out of the question. The Citizen’s Militia or the WOP. Of course back then, I was thinking about something else. I thought that I wanted to see the world. I was in my twenties, I was twenty-two and the world was on the other side, and it created this obsession of sorts, why can’t I go and see the world. Well, it turns out I couldn’t. And so it was that I associated this Western World with everything that’s prohibited, this forbidden fruit, that you’re not allowed to, and that probably I won’t be able to go there ever. On the other hand, I associated it with all the nice things. Namely, we were watching movies from Western countries in cinemas, French, Italian, sometimes American etc. And all these movies introduced that world to me, unattainable, un... So, in ‘66 totally on accident, I won an apprenticeship abroad. I was studying at the Gdańsk University of Technology, where I finished two years in electronics, and then transferred to the Warsaw University of Technology, because it was the same principle. Not because... I like… I love Gdańsk, not that, but I wanted to see more. And then, such a possibility was to transfer to Warsaw, the capital city. Back then, there was an airplane connection two times a week from Gdańsk to Warsaw with these high wing planes from the Zaspa airport. It’s no longer them. And Warsaw was like at the centre of the World, for example it had the first and only escalator in the country between Marienstadt and Plac Zamkowy. That was something. Gdańsk didn’t have that. Not at all, so the difference between a small or medium town which Gdańsk was back then, and Warsaw was tremendous.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Warsaw was fascinating at every step, but Jacek was constantly looking for something new. As an honour student, he won an apprenticeship in West Germany. His decision was quick and the only possible one. He left.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: I was able to see the forbidden Western World. In that case, the most advanced industrial country back then. In those times, West Germany was something else entirely. Another world. And then I thought that it would be good to do some sightseeing around this interesting World and I wasn’t thinking about money, because I had a national scholarship, which afforded me some good living. That wasn’t the thing. It wasn’t about money, but the ability to see the World. We read Jack London, or Curwood, and others, who wrote about the Far North. Anyway, everything was far away, everything was exotic, everything was unattainable. Shortly thereafter, I left on a private invitation, first to France, and then again to Germany. Next, in Germany, I enrolled with their merchant navy. Something that was practically impossible in Poland, to go to the Maritime Authority and say “I want to be a sailor.” They told me: “very well, go to the first floor to see the doctor, he’ll examine you, sign your papers, and then come back here”. So, I went to the first floor. The German doctor told me to “cough twice”. He signed the papers, I took them and went back down, received my seaman's book, and had a job all lined up. On a specific boat. I was able to see quite a bit - Northern Atlantic, Southern Atlantic, Africa, Canary Islands, England, Liverpool, it was soon after the Beatles moved to London, but they still had the Covern Club, I remember as if it was yesterday. In France too, so many interesting cities, Spain. Spain was generally off limits, you couldn’t enter whether you wanted to or not. But, because I had a German seaman’s book, so general Franco’s MPs let me go sightseeing around the cities the ship visited. Valencia, Cadiz, Barcelona, Seville, Canary Islands etc. So, an accident allowed me to see the World, but then there came a time to visit Canada, because Canada was always tugging at me, mainly because of the books I read. All these interesting books about the Far North, about Eskimos, Indians, the Klondike Gold Rush etc., all of that happened in Canada, so it was imperative... So, I went to the Canadian consulate in Hanover, I remember, I told them I’d like to go to Canada. They said to write an application and I went back in two weeks and there was a Canadian residence visa waiting for me. So it was, for a boy who grew up in the People’s Republic, an unprecedented situation. The possibilities that were unheard of in Poland. I went to Canada immediately, and was delighted with the country and the Canadian nation, everything I saw, and everything that... so, I liked it very much from the get go, it was love at first sight - Canada. I liked everything - the people, the customs, the culture, and the nature, including job opportunities, very interesting. In Canada, I got a degree in physics, as I interrupted my studies in Poland, things being what they were, that in Poland, even if someone, somehow, some student got a passport, it was only if they didn’t get their diploma yet. And if they graduated, they could say bye-bye to a passport once and for all. So it was a simple question - a passport or a diploma. I thought that in that case, I’ll take the passport, see the World, and I’ll get a diploma somewhere else somehow... And yeah, like I said I got a degree in physics, I always liked it and felt I was good at it, so I went to study it at the widely known University of Waterloo, world renowned. So, I had Canadian papers and in the meantime, Canadian citizenship, and grew to like Canada very much and felt very good while I was there. And besides, Poland was still communist for many years, twenty something, which was the main reason I left. And at the moment it all fell down, the first thing I did was to board a plane and flew back, it was in ‘91 or ‘92.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Back then Poland didn’t look anything like the West. One political order ended, but another was yet to really begin. As Jacek says, there wasn’t anything to go back to, so he decided to stay in Canada for longer.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: In Canada, I lived for a long time, I mean, most of the time in Montreal actually, it’s the most beautiful city on that continent. And I had a summer house at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River which flows through Montreal, to enter the Atlantic Ocean several hundred kilometres further on creating an estuary. And there at its mouth, there are many lighthouses. Beautiful lighthouses, each one different from the next... you can see them here at the exhibition. And I thought semi-seriously that, well, that I would like to have a lighthouse of my own one day, but it would be, you know, somewhat like I would want to have my own moon. But when I arrived to Poland, I visited Polish lighthouses in the nineties. I liked all of them and everything was beautiful. And one of my acquaintances told me “You know? In Gdańsk, in Nowy Port, there is this lighthouse, but it’s abandoned, rundown, scheduled for demolition”. So I thought, well it’s worth to see it. I came here, to Nowy Port and immediately had an epiphany. I thought “This is it!”. I went to the Maritime Authority, submitted the necessary papers. I told them that I wanted to save this lighthouse, convert it, transform it into a museum. They gave me a strange look, that it was a strange idea, because it was 1999. It was still a different time than what we have today, where many lighthouses go into private hands, to people who want to save them from destruction, for private reasons or like mine, as a gift for others.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Jacek’s parents lived in Gdynia. He himself was born in Warsaw.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: But I was born in Warsaw because it was wartime. And during the war, people, Poles couldn’t live in Gdańsk nor Gdynia. My father was an MD, back then he was a ship’s physician on many Polish, well-known boats, including “Dar Pomorza”, “Piłsudski”, “Batory”, etc. And shortly before the war, last year before it broke out, he was a port’s physician for the emigrant camp in Babie Doły near Gdynia and the Gdynia Port, and the National Maritime School in Gdynia, so he held these three posts in ‘38 and ‘39. And besides, my parents met on the “Piłsudski”. My mom was a nurse on the “Piłsudski”, my dad was a ship’s physician, and they fell in love and got married in ‘38. So, since ‘38, they’ve been living together in Gdynia, and I was born in Warsaw, where they had to move after the war broke out. And dad worked there throughout the occupation as an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Hygiene. And that’s why I was born in Warsaw in ‘43. But the war was still going, when dad took my mom and I to Gdańsk in April. So I was 1.5 years old. From that time, I don’t remember Warsaw at all, only Gdańsk. I remember Gdańsk when I was a kid, Górny Wrzeszcz. Górny Wrzeszcz was my domain. It was mine, you know how little boys are, they have their territories and don’t let outsiders in, and if they do, it’s only to give them a beating. I’m kidding of course. No one was fighting anybody, but boys do stand guard over their turfs. My friends’, those pre-schoolers, turf was Górny Wrzeszcz.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Where did you live exactly?

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Hoene-Wrońskiego. First, Dębinki. That’s where my parents lived in one of those company villas, and later they bought their own house at the Hoene-Wrońskiego St., it’s the short, very short street that connects Curie-Skłodowskiej and Dębinki streets. Number 7 to be more precise. So it was my territory.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: How much do you remember from that time?

Stefan Jacek Michalak: I remember everything, I even recently met a preschool friend. And there was this “Gypsy Mound”, of course it’s still there. Back then Gypsies travelled with their wagon trains along the street, back then it was called “ulica Alei Zwycięstwa”, completely different, it was called “Aleja Marszałka Rokosowskiego”. And well there were military transports, and not only military, and Polish and Russian armies, and Gypsy wagon trains, a lot of wagons. And the Gypsies camped on the Gypsy Mound. The name didn’t come from nowhere, they were the only ones to camp there, and they sang very beautifully, and played their violins. Very nicely, we little boys liked to spy on them. Except, our parents said that Gypsies steal babies, so we had to be careful, since none of use wanted to be kidnapped.

My father was killed in ‘47 when he was trying to save people in the Gdańsk Bay, so I was 4 years old when I lost him. Today, his statue is standing in the square named after him in front of the Medical Academy, so... But it’s a statue, not my father, nothing can replace a man. Like a sunny picture. Nice, very nice. I remember everything, everything from back then. All of it, yes. So happiness, you know, a sense of happiness. Excuse me, but...

Person 1: These gentlemen are from far away, can they have a stamp? They’re collectors. I don’t know how to...

Person 2: Thank you, sir.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Where are you from, gentlemen?

Person 3: Nysa. And we were in Krynica Morska, and we’re on our way back.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: And you even have this passport.

Person 3: From Krynica... Well, it’s a passport and sightseeing badge “Along the Trail of Lighthouses on the Polish Coast”, right? And you know... Nowy Port, they chased us out of the Port Północny, but it doesn’t matter. Port Północny and... Well here it is, Nowy Port, the area’s closed off and no one can get in.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: So, you’ve already seen Krynica, what else?

Person 3: Yes, yes, we’re done with Krynica, we were actually 125 kilometres on bicycles, on bicycles. And well, we’re in a hurry, ‘cause we need to find a place for the night, we want to go to Sopot, and tomorrow, Sopot, Hel, Jastarnia, and towards Świnoujście. And you know, I even have a notebook here. Thank you very much. Thank you and we’re off. Good night.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: When Jacek is in, there are constantly some guests. Even outside the season and opening hours. So we were constantly being interrupted, but each time, we managed to return to the tale.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: My mother was locked in a prison. She got three years for nothing. Back then, you could get sentenced for nothing and she got one for attempting to illegally cross the national border. A young widow with two little kids. But, that’s how it was. And the sentence was accompanied by a condition that neither she, nor her children could live anywhere in the border zone. And Gdańsk is exactly that. That’s why we moved to Poznań, where my grandparents lived who gave us a hand. So that’s where I went to primary, lower secondary, and higher secondary school, back then there wasn’t... a higher secondary school. But the ink didn’t even dry properly on my matura diploma when I was in an overnight train to Gdańsk. I was drawn there. So I enrolled at the Gdańsk University of Technology, to the Faculty of Communications as it was called back then, they later changed it to Electronics. There were these student cabarets such as Rudy Kot, Bim-Bom, but well, it wasn’t enough for a twenty something boy who wanted to see more, see the World. So, as I said, that was when I moved to Warsaw and from there, West. And before I noticed, forty something years had passed.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: Jacek is divorced. In Canada, he left two sons and a granddaughter with whom, as he says, he’s in good and quite frequent contact. He loved and still loves travelling, meeting people, discovering the unknown.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Everything’s very pretty and the whole World is beautiful. The World is worth seeing. I saw, maybe not the entire World, maybe half, maybe a quarter, but it was quite a lot. I lived in Saudi Arabia for two years, so I really saw a lot, but especially when a person slowly, right, comes of age, let’s say, then the more they’re drawn to the places they remember from their childhood. There’s no cure for that. It’s something that’s more powerful than a man. Simply put, each stone in Gdańsk speaks to me. I like Canada very much, I love Canada and Montreal in particular, generally Canada, but Montreal in particular - beautiful, absolutely beautiful city. Very nice people too, so it’s not connected with any sort of... Yeah, I like them very much, very nice people, but that’s not where my roots are. I’m very well received there, because I have Canadian citizenship, I have a Canadian passport, all Canadian papers, but there is this internal strength that draws a person to the places he remembers from his childhood. In my case, it so fortunately happened that I could come back to the city of my childhood, because you know, it’s not always possible, for example for people who run away from a country, I won’t list them, that they can’t go back to and that’s it. I wanted to come back, and even managed to realise this beautiful project, the lighthouse in Gdańsk, a beautiful monument full of history and beautiful architecture. So it’s my contribution, if I may say so, to the cultural life of Gdańsk. So I’m double happy.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: And this happiness is noticeable in Jacek’s eyes each time he talks about the lighthouse to anyone who would listen. I also had the pleasure to listen to his tale. As evening is close at hand, we exit the lighthouse. Lighthouses were always present in Jacek’s life. They reminded him of the sea.

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Because my parents, both of them, were sailors. My paternal grandfather was also a shipyard worker at what was then the biggest shipyard in Cologne, Hovald’s Shipyards. He did artistic woodwork, so back then all ships in the world boasted beautiful cabins, officers’ messes, living rooms, captains’ quarters etc. So this is the third generation of seamen. So I was also drawn to it. This just fell into my lap. The lighthouse did. It was a gift from the heavens.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: What did emigration give you? What did you learn from it?

Stefan Jacek Michalak: Oh, many things, even excluding languages, other cultures, other political systems, other economies, other types of human interactions, everything was different. So, I’m very glad that I could see the World also from this angle. I felt like a Pole and Canadian at the same time. Half of my life has passed in Canada, so it’s hard to have it otherwise. I like both Poland and Canada, but most of all, I like Gdańsk.

Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot: These were “Notes of an Emigrant”, the first part of a series of reports - stories about leaving and coming back to Poland. The hero of this tale was Jacek Michalak, who after spending 45 years in Germany and Canada, finally returned to Poland to take care of the lighthouse in Nowy Port. The series of reports are created with cooperation of the Emigration Museum of Gdynia, under the “Ask for Poland” project. The project was realised by Stefan Kotiuk and prepared by Magda Świerczyńska-Dolot. Join us next week, Tuesday after 10 p.m. Good night.