Polish Community Centre, Vancouver, BC

Polish Friendship ZGODA Society was established in the year 1926. The Polish Community in Vancouver began building in 1956 and was completed in 1959. Engineered by Roman Zurowski, the architect of “Dom Polski.” Roman Zurowski was the President of Polish Friendship “Zgoda” Society from 1956-1960. The first significant wave of Poles arrived in British Columbia early this century; though they came directly from Japan, not Poland. They had been serving with the Russian forces and taken prisoner by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Most of them were economic immigrants who didn’t want to return to Russian-occupied Poland, and instead settled on farms in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island, or got jobs as railway workers. Combined with a small number of immigrants who arrived in the late 1800s, there were about 1, 300 Poles scattered about the province by 1921. In 1926 seven friends started the Polish Friendship Society in Vancouver to maintain the Polish identity, preserve the Polish language and help new arrivals. In 1959 the association opened the Polish Community Centre on Fraser Street.