Goodbye Professor: Memories of My Father

De: Andrew Kavchak

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Andrzej (Andrew) Stanisław Kawczak was born in Poland in the mid-1920s. After the war, Andrzej studied and practiced law. However, he preferred to pursue an academic career in philosophy and obtained a doctorate from the University of Warsaw in 1960, specializing in logic. In 1960 he obtained a Ford Foundation scholarship to study at Columbia University in New York City. After twenty years of living under Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism, he and his wife opted to stay in the West.

In 1961 he obtained a position as a professor of philosophy at Loyola College in Montreal. It was a position that he loved and held until his retirement in 1992. In the 1970s he became the chair of the philosophy department and continued in that position following the 1974 merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University that formed Concordia University.

Andrzej Kawczak was a Polish patriot. He dreamed of the day when Poland would free itself from Soviet occupation and regain its sovereignty. He had no idea if that would happen in his lifetime, but was convinced that it was inevitable because he considered Soviet communism to be bankrupt and unsustainable. He was an active member of the Polish community and was a Vice-President of the Canadian Polish Congress. In 1989, he visited Poland for the first time in three decades to witness the disintegration of communist rule in his country of origin. Andrzej Kawczak died in 2023.

Goodbye Professor: Memories of My Father is a book of reminiscences by Andrzej Kawczak's son. It was written to preserve his father’s memory. Sometimes, before you can close the book you have to write it first.