The monument, displayed outside the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, is built with a large piece of natural sandstone from southern Poland. “This is extremely important, emotionally, for Polish people, the people who cannot go anymore to Poland, to touch this rock and be in Poland. In the mid-1800s, two waves of Poles arrived in Canada, forming the country’s first Polish settlements in Ontario. While immigration was restricted during Depression-era Canada, around 64,000 Polish exiles and refugees came to Canada between the end of the Second World War and 1956. His grandparents came through Pier 21, then an immigration facility, in the early 20th century.

Source: thestar September 16, 2018 17:37 UTC