A bust of Frédéric Chopin is travelling across Canada. The Canadian Polish community is observing the locations visited by the sculpture being transported by truck. The route can be followed on the facebook profile of the Polish consulate in Vancouver.

After arriving in Toronto on a LOT plane, the sculpture got transported by truck, whose driver reports the entire journey on his Youtube channel. There have already been stops in Montreal, Quebec, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the truck is now heading further west to Vancouver, British Columbia.

“The idea stemmed from the fact that there was no statue or bust of Chopin in Canada earlier. We wanted it to be a bronze bust, commissioned in Poland”, explains Andrzej Emeryk Mankowski, Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Vancouver.

The transport company Tri-Pol Entreprises from Calgary offered to transport the sculpture from east to west Canada free of charge. The route can be followed in real time thanks to the tracking of the truck driven by Zbyszek Giza, a Polish driver who is also a YouTuber and has been posting videos documenting the journey with the composer’s bust on his channel since Friday. Polish diplomats have also become involved, reporting on social media about ‘encounters’ with the sculpture in their consular districts. 

“We are meeting with the sympathy and kindness of the Polish diaspora, who have joined in the search for places that are clusters of Poles along the truck’s journey, where it is worth organising a short visit by Chopin. Such help was provided, for example, by Grażyna and Lech Gałęzowski, who documented Polish memorabilia on the Canadian prairies in two published albums”, emphasised Mankowski.

The travelling bust of Chopin is a copy of the 1926 miniature of the composer’s head from the monument in Warsaw’s Royal Łazienki Park, designed by Wacław Szymanowski and Franciszek Mączyński. 

Arkadiusz Słomczyński