If you don’t know why local people love to celebrate Polish and Kashub Day on May 3 every year, The Opeongo Readers’ Theatre may be able to help explain it. At 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, May 1 at the Opeongo Senior Centre, 19 Stafford Street, Barry’s Bay, this troupe of local podcast performers will present another extraordinary live show based on rare, local-history documents. It’s called “The Life and Times of Mrs. Shalla.”
To many people old enough to remember Mrs. Shalla in the Barry’s Bay-Wilno area, she was their Grade III teacher, way back in the 1960s. But she was much, much more.
In fact, she was the daughter of two Polish emigrants – John Etmanski and Mary Kiedroski – who had come to Canada as children and who had settled in the Brudenell-Wilno area where they eventually were married in 1877. The couple had twelve children of their own, their ninth being Elizabeth Etmanski. It was she who would eventually become Mrs. Shalla.
Elizabeth was a precocious child with a keen intellect and a shrewdly observant eye, especially when it came to her two rambunctious older brothers, Pete and Angus. In a phrase, Elizabeth began life in 1890 as she always lived it until 1978: With equal parts fascination, courage, faith, wit, strength and yet, as only the Polish can, always with an eye to being useful to someone else.
Elizabeth’s life included everything from being a helpful five-year-old in an old log shanty in the middle of what sometimes felt like nowhere, to being twenty-two in the summer of 1913 and taking an intercontinental train to Chicago to help her uncles in the middle of everywhere. Besides her career as a joyful teacher, passionate linguist, and hard-working homemaker, Mrs. Shalla also created the first hospital auxiliary in 1948 and in which she worked for twelve years to raise enough funds to help open St. Francis Memorial Hospital in Barry’s Bay in 1960.
Early in 1970, as Mrs. Shalla approached her 80th birthday, she began writing an evocative and revealing memoir that included, among other things, significant cultural observations and explanations of her own Polish and Kashub heritage. Recently, the grandchildren of Mrs. Shalla gave the producer of The Opeongo Readers’ Theatre unique access to her hand-written manuscript, totaling well over 120 pages. He was so taken by the literary quality of its cultural and heritage revelations – a true treasure-trove for local people and international academics alike – that the Opeongo Readers’ Theatre decided to devote its entire Polish and Kashub Podcast Show towards its world premiere. It’s that good!
To add to the show’s obvious charm, one of Mrs. Shalla’s grandchildren, Michael C. Glofcheskie will host the show and perform some of the readings along with Lois Losole, Kristin Marchand and Karen Yakabuski. Free admission to all. Donations gladly accepted by The Station Keepers, a new volunteer group dedicated to preserving and promoting Valley culture and heritage.
Conway,B. Opeongo Readers’ Theatre (2019,Apr.25) The Life & Times of Mrs. Shalla [press release]