In her book, “Seeking Peace: The Quakers, Heather Kirk provides an historical account of the Quakers and their ever-lasting mission to promote peace through acts of civil disobedience. Kirk's main argument throughout the book will be that by honouring the principle of pacifism with such determination and zeal, the Quakers have proved immeasurably beneficial for the rest of mankind. So while it may have been difficult and arduous for the Quakers to live by this value, the... influences that they had upon greater society were tremendous... ”

“Seeking Peace: The Quakers is another book I just finished reading and recommend to all you Quakers out there-and even some who aren't. Subtitle: “One of the longest and most influential non-violent resistance movements in history.” Who knew that the writing of the covenant for the League of Nations and that of the UN had Quaker involvement? Author is Heather Kirk, a non-Quaker. ”

“Thank you for giving me a copy of your new book. I am really enjoying it. You've done a terrific job of research and putting it together in an inviting way. Congratulations on producing an accessible book on such an important topic!!!”

“Will be valuable resource for Friends Schools.”

“This is a book written for many different people, including school children, new attenders, and old time Friends. Although I have attended Friends gatherings for 50 years, I learned a lot about the life and work of Quakers who may have been well-known in their time but have become more obscure as the years go by.”

- The Kosciuszko Foundation
New York, NY, USA

“Be Not Afraid can be recommended for general readers who are largely unfamiliar with the story of modern Poland and that of Solidarity, its origins, leaders, and incredible achievement. May both of these stories be told and retold, again and again.”

- Donald E. Pienkos,Professor Emeritus
University of Wisconson at Milwaukee
The Polish Review 58.4 (2014)

“Be Not Afraid is an insightful look into the start of something which changed our world for the better.”

“Excellent reference for 20th century Polish history.”

“The book is an easy read, filled with bite-sized bits of historical information, as well as creative non-fiction, Polish jokes and compelling photographs.”

“The force of non-violence is undeniable, as the message is absolute. Be Not Afraid: The Polish (R)evolution, “Solidarity” discusses the rise of a Poland free from Soviet influence in 1989, and how it contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Heather Kirk, who visited Poland and gained the pulse of its people, offers a fine complilation of photography, poetry, and much more to grant a snapshot of a people who liberated themselves by simply not being moved.  Be Not Afraid is a valuable read to understand the power of protest, very much recommended.”

“World History Shelf”
Small Press Bookwatch: December 2011
Midwest Book Review

Powerful, peaceful and quintessentially Polish: Solidarity. Canadian author
Heather Kirk spotlights the many facts of a world-changing revolution that killed “precisely no one.”

When Canadian author and educator, Heather Kirk, is asked what motivated her to write a book about Poland’s Solidarity movement she replies without hesitation. There are lots of books about war, but very few about non-violent resistance. How are young people to know about it? So she chose to write about the biggest and most successful one of them all: “Solidarity involved ten
million people over a period of ten years. It freed Poland from Soviet domination. It contributed greatly to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It killed precisely no one.” The dedication reads “For the people of Poland.”

Heather Kirk, who lives in Barrie, Ontario, is by no means the first to write about Solidarity but it is ironic that a resistance movement that was, more than any other, a people’s movement, has largely been of interest primarily to intellectuals who write dense history, often dwelling on the minutiae of strategy and complex analyses primarily aimed at--and understood by--academics.
Without a repertoire of sound bites, one-liners and colourful personalities, what are western journalists to do?

Ms. Kirk wanted to communicate this magnificent people’s story to “the people.” Solidarity toppled a tyranny in part because its communications were pure genius, despite the need for secrecy. But abroad, it failed to create a long term impression, other than its famous logo and the dashing young electrician.

It is no accident that broadcasts commemorating the fall of communism invariably show the happy crowd dismantling the Berlin Wall. You couldn’t script a better scene to play out in front of television cameras, especially for audiences weaned on Disney. Never mind that this scene tells you nothing about the long, hard, disciplined, and complicated struggle that took place--not
in East Germany, but in Poland.

In Be Not Afraid Heather Kirk creates a people’s history for the people, well researched and factfilled, but told in a quirky, original way, with a treasure trove of terrific quotations, personal stories, short biographical sketches, and historical gems, she explains national and religious symbols, and throws in the “Polish jokes” of that era--those clever and witty put downs of communists and their masters in Moscow.

Let’s start with one of those:

On a visit to China, Jaruzelski asked a Chinese leader, “What’s the numerical
strength of your opposition?”
“About 35 million,” replied the Chinese leader.
“Ah!” responded Jaruzelski, “About the same as our number.”

Yes, an entire nation opposed. And how did this nation oppose? Kirk gathers vivid examples.

Solidarity’s most common decoration, decorating factory gates and monuments . . . honoring leaders and heroes . . . were garlands and wreathes of flowers. “Disdain for dictators is easy, disdain for violence, the dictators’ favorite tool, is not so easy . . . But renouncing it pays . . .”

Poetry. In Poland, Kirk explains, the “poetico-political dream world of literature” is of vital importance. It ensures survival, moral survival, no matter what the political reality. She tells of shipyard workers writing poetry during the strike. “Let the lie and falsehood disappear and let the goodness and truth permeate the nation . . .”

Music. The workers composed songs, sang them at meetings, in their factories, at demonstrations. One, “Zeby Polska byla Polska” (So that Poland Can Be Poland) became the theme song for Solidarity.

Theatre. What were the students protesting in the riots of 1968? The authorities banned a play. Interfered with their cultural life.

Kirk is well aware that poetry, music, theatre may strike non-Poles as odd weapons to use during a strike but she provides the context, the historical and cultural background and then, it seems as normal as brandishing a weapon--but much more civilized and effective. These are weapons chosen because they give strength to the oppressed, not to attack others.

Faith. Do Not Be Afraid. Those were the Pope’s words. Don’t be afraid. The nation is with you proclaimed one of the bannners that greeted Lech Walesa at a festival of song and poetry at the Warsaw Opera House. Kirk points out that Henryk Gorecki, one of Poland’s greatest modern composers emphasized that music, and the other arts--literature, painting, film--are a form of prayer. Let us not forget--Solidarity included atheists too.

Solidarity was not just a word, a slogan. It was a union of all the people, peaceful, hopeful, imbued with faith. Solidarity is, by definition, inclusive, accepting, understanding.

There is so much in Kirk’s book. The personalities: Kuron, Michnik, Bujak, Mazowiecki, Anna Walentynowicz, Alina Pienkowska, and Walesa among so many others, all have their cameo biographies. Brief, warm, human biographies.

Personal stories, all true but written as fictional narrative, illuminate the times.
Walesa’simpoverished childhood, his father’s premature death from the physical abuse he endured in German camps. Stories of women trying to care for families despite shortages of essentials, of wives and children afraid their father will be arrested or killed.

Be Not Afraid is a surprising, unusual book. Kirk lists a bibliography and recommends readings on certain topics throughout the text. She also acknowledges Professor Anna Cienciala--who is always generous with her time and her knowledge--to whom Kirk turned with questions along the way. I highly recommend this much needed book and hope it finds its way into school, university and public libraries everywhere. Ms. Kirk paints an impressive picture of a society that endured much, and overcame much, with great honour and dignity.

Irene Tomaszewski,
Cosmopolitan Review 3.4 (2012)

Be Not Afraid: The Polish (R)evolution,“Solidarity” by Heather Kirk. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 2011.  Softbound, pp. 275, $19.95 CDN.  To order: www.borealispress.com/benotafraid.html. (U.S. credit cards accepted) or call tollfree (877) 696-2585.

Polish history is full of events of which Polish Americans can be rightly proud.  Medieval Poland was a sanctuary for Jews in a Europe where they often faced persecution.  Polish medieval and Renaissance philosophers and theologians like Pawel Wlodkowic laid key foundations for international law theory.  Sixteenth century Poland was “a state with out stakes” amidst the religious warfare of Reformation Europe.  The Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 was among the most progressive of its time, exterminated at the hands of repressive empires like Russia, Prussia, and Austria.  In our own times, a son of Poland who sat on the Chair of Peter is increasingly recognized as one of the few Popes worthy of the title “the Great.”  And one common element of all these historical events is that they did not just benefit Poland alone, but represented milestones in Western civilization (even if, sometimes, Western civilization chooses to forget them).

Also in our own day, another of those great milestones through which many readers lived was the emergence and achievements of the trade union Solidarnosc (Solidarity).  Inspired by the inaugural call of John Paul II’s pontificate--“Be Not Afraid!”--and concretized by the Pope’s first visit to Poland, Solidarity did just what John Paul prayed for in Warsaw in 1979.  Solidarity helped “renew the face of the earth” by its struggle and its example.  It can be argued that tearing down the Berlin Wall began not at the Brandenburg Wall but in Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard.

Canadian author Heather Kirk has written a popularly accessible portrait of Solidarity’s “golden age,” 1980-90.  The book is especially suited to (but not limited to) high school and college students.  Be Not Afraid is her take on a movement that “was the greatest non-violent resistance movement in history.  It lasted ten years.  It involved ten million people.  It helped change the world.  It killed precisely no one.”

The book is divided into eleven chapters.  Each chapter, in turn, includes sections like “creative nonfiction,” “history,” “biography,” “analysis,” and even a “Polish Joke.”  The “jokes” are, indeed, political jokes taken from the time, intended to show how the Poles could shrewdly size up their own situation, even with humor.  When little Jasiek is asked by his Communist teacher in school “Why do we call Czechoslovakia and East Germany our friends but the Soviet Union our brother?” the boy is quick to reply “Because you can pick your friends but you’re stuck with your brother.”

Kirk begins by introducing readers to Polish history, especially its twentieth century lot of being consigned behind the Iron Curtain. (A five-age outline of Polish history, focusing mostly on the twentieth century, is provided.)  Special attention is given to World War II (including both Katyn and the Underground Polish Resistance).  The book then moves through the worker-inspired uprisings of 1956, 1970, snd 1976, as well as the student uprising of 1968 and KOR. The election of Karol Wojtyla as Pope and his first visit to Poland is detailed, along with the path to the beginnings of Solidarity in Gdansk in the summer of 1980.  The history of that first phase of free Solidarity (1980-81) is discussed, as well as its brutal persecution under the martial law imposed in 1981.  But Solidarity continued its work underground throughout the 1980s (which led, for example, to the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko).  Kirk’s story ends with the Roundtable Agreements of 1989, and the end of the Polish Peoples’ Republic and, finally, the end of the USSR. Among the biographies included in the book are Karol Wojtyla, Anna Walentynowicz, Lech Walesa, Adam Michnik. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Wojciech Jaruzelski, and Bronislaw Geremek.

The book is designed for people who know little to nothing about Poland: it often provides contexts that a pure history of Solidarity would not.  For example, the “geography” component in various chapters introduces readers to Krakow, Warsaw, and Gdansk.  The book is amply illustrated.  It includes examples from songs and texts of the time, e.g., “The Ballad of Janek Wisniewski,” a poem about the 18-year-old killed in the December 1970 food riots in Gdansk, whose body was borne by workers atop a door in newsreel footage.  Each chapter also offers suggestions to view various films, e.g., “Kanal” or listen to music, e.g. Gorecki’s “Symphony No. 3" to expose readers further to Polish culture.

The book is designed for people who know little to nothing about Poland: it often provides contexts that a pure history of Solidarity would not.

If somebody was teaching a course in Solidarity, this work would be a good textbook.  But anybody who wants a good, well-rounded and comprehensive mainstream presentation of Solidarity can read it.  Polish American youth will especially learn much about their ancestral homeland in this thoroughly modern presentation.  (“Modern?”--Well, the “suggested activities” also include “look up X on the Internet.”)

The book ends in 1990 and, of course, subsequent events do raise questions about how we should interpret the history of Solidarity.  Solidarity, after all, held together a Catholic wing as well as a wing that was happy to avail itself of Catholic protection even as it would subsequently pursue its own culture war against the “confessional state” once Poland was free.  The meaning of the Roundtable Agreements, expecially in terms of holding or not holding communists to account for what they did to Poland for forty-some years, also raised questions of how to interpret Solidarity.  Lech Walesa’s own background remains a subject of controversy.  But these issues are beyond the scope of Kirk’s book, which focuses on Solidarity’s “Golden Age” in the 1980s.  Awareness of these subsequent issues, however, does not detract from what this book offers.

Know some young people--Polish American or not--who should learn something about Poland and Solidarity at the same time? Want to learn something yourself about those issues in an easy- to-read, well-written book?  Consider giving or getting Be Not Afraid.  Placing a copy in your local library would also be a good idea.          

“I love your manuscript, I just love it, and I think it definitely should be published. . . . It’s a lovely piece of scholarship. . . . It’s well written . . . beautifully written. . . . It certainly deserves to be out. . . . Congratulations!”

“Recommended.”

“An impressive body of research.”

Article on Mazo de la Roche

- Stephen Henighan, “Canadian Literature,”
Times Literary Supplement 4 Nov. 2005

“Barrie Author Breathes New Life into Classic Métis Novel.”

“Recommended.”

“Barely Able to Put It Down” : A Satisfied Reader of Wacousta Writes to Heather Kirk

Dear Ms. Kirk,
I recently purchased your book Wacousta, an abridged version of John Richardson's tale. As an American I was not familiar with who John Richardson was until I read Pierre Berton's The Invasion of Canada: 1812-1813 and Flames across the Border: 1813-1814. In these books, Mr. Berton describes Mr. Richardson many times and tells of some of the amazing things he had seen and done during the American invasion of Canada. I was interested in reading Wacousta, but was afraid to attempt reading this novel because of the archaic language. I have read all of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and enjoyed them immensely, but these days I only have a little time to read before bed as I have small children that take away most of my free time. By the time I get to bed to read, the last thing I want to do is slug through wordy, early nineteenth century dialogue. I looked for other abridged copies, but found out that all of them are just shortened versions of the book that make no attempt to simplify the language. Eventually, my research led me to your book that seemed to be everything I was looking for in a modern language version of the book that keeps all the important scenes. So far I am barely able to put it down, although my children and my job have forced me to do so. You did a great job rewriting this story. I appreciate how difficult it must have been for you to update the language, remove the excess dialogue, and yet remain true to the story. Thank you very much for undertaking this effort. By the way, I am saddened by Mr. Richardson's eventual fate, an unmarked grave in New York. How unfortunate that he died in poverty, alone and in obscurity.

“Pity John Richardson, the first Canadian-born novelist, and not just because he died penniless and malnourished in New York City in 1852.  The publishing industry simply won’t let him rest in peace.  This Métis soldier and writer is best known for his novel Wacousta; a tale of murder, revenge and romance in old Fort Detroit in 1763.  Mr. Richardson, however, did not earn a pot of money, at least partially because the Americans published their own pirated edition.  Now, thanks to the work of one Barrie, Ont. author, Wacousta has been published again at half the length of the original text and in a fashion meant to win a new generation of readers.  ‘It’s a refurbished antique,’ says Heather Kirk, who decided about eight years ago to rewrite Wacousta.”

“Wacousta remains important whatever version you read and not just because it was written by the first Canadian-born novelist.  It is impressive, despite the awkward language, because of its wealth of historical detail and the even-handed way it portrays both aboriginals and Europeans. Both groups are presented warts and all.  There are heroes and villains on both sides and even some inter-racial romance.”

“Richardson’s tale of the ‘Indian Wars’ of 1763 was first published in 1832. Kirk’s rewrite cleans up the clunky 19-century prose while keeping the gripping plot and details.”

“First published in 1832, Major John Richardson’s three-volume Wacousta is a classic tale of the ‘Indian Wars’ of 1763 and the attacks on Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac.  It’s a great yarn, but for many readers, alas, also a great yawn.  The New Canadian Library’s introduction to their 1967 abridged edition speaks of the ‘stiff, rhetorical, even archaic prose’ of the original.  Heather Kirk has dared to rewrite Richardson, using many of his phrases but also ‘translating’ many of the passages to make them more accessible and more appealing to modern readers.  Some may find this a travesty while others will thoroughly enjoy Kirk’s version--and may even be led back to check out the original!”

Warsaw Spring is “a history book, a romance novel, and a coming-of-age story all wrapped up between the covers of a young-adult fiction.”

“Eva discovers Poland’s long history of suffering, the ongoing traumatic aftermath of World War II, and the debilitating influence of the communist regime of the day.  When Pope John Paul II visits Poland, Eva is amazed at the people’s faith and realizes she is witnessing rebirth not only of a nation but also of her inner bring.  She understands that the pope is leading a political as well as spiritual revolution.”