Lost Legacies: Learning from Ancestral Stories for Inspiration and Policy-Making Today

In today’s individualistic Western society, wisdom from our elders’ lives and homelands is being lost. A retired lawyer and psychologist, whose Polish roots were virtually unknown to her while she grew up in Canada, author Margaret Ostrowski had been always touched by the historical backgrounds of the immigrant groups she encountered. In Lost Legacies, she embarked on a quest to explore her own heritage - her grandmother (and father’s) home in the Russian Partition of Poland and their journey and settlement here. Years of research from a wide range of sources helped her realize that she was a Western Slav from a country with a remarkable Golden Era, with outstanding heroes, scientists, and artisans combined with an unfortunate vulnerable location between aggressive powers that removed Poland from the map for 123 years. Her paternal grandmother’s story includes the death of infants, a gold mine, and a Canadian poet. In Lost Legacies, ancestral stories inspire differing views of how to live, help formulate opinions and policies on immigration today, and assist in properly caring for our invitees or alternately aiding them to remain in the homelands they hold in their hearts.