Bogdan Zaborski, 1901-1985

Born the son of a railway engineer in Warsaw Poland, Bogdan would become an outstanding geographer, geomorphologist, and polyglot. He would hold the position of geography professor at multiple universities in Poland, England, and in Canada. He was responsible for completing and moderninzing the collections of maps at institutions like McGill, Sir George Williams (now Concordia), Ottawa, Carleton, and the University of Alberta. The map libraries at the latter two institutions at one time bearing his name, as do many of the maps in their collections to this day. The digitized WWII topographic maps of Central Europe (1:25,000) covering eastern Holland, Germany, and Poland displayed on the McMaster University website are a prime example of this--his name stamp clearly visible in the margins. Zaborski's private collection of maps is said to have numbered as high as 20,000 sheets, even though it suffered significant loss during the war years.

Bogdan was at one time a lieutenant of the Polish Army artillery, an employee of the Military Geographical Institute (WIG), a participant in the Polish-Soviet war and World War II, a prisoner and exile in Soviet Russia, and the organizer of the map printing office for the Geographical Section of the Ministry of Information of the Polish Government in Exile in London, England. It is there that he edited the Map of Poland and Adjacent Countries in McMaster's collection. After WWII he remained an exile, leaving England to emigrate to Canada, landing first in Montreal and eventually settling in Ottawa. He was a founding father of the Polish Scientific Society Abroad. And In 1951--along with Lloyd Reeds of McMaster University and seven other geographers--he founded the Canadian Association of Geographers. His publications are numerous, and include the Atlas of landscapes and settlements of eastern Canada (1972). He died on February 22, 1985 in Ottawa, and is buried at the Notre-Dame Cemetery.

Brief Biography

Brief Biography

The following is an excerpt from Polish Contribution to Arts and Sciences in Canada, by Andrzej Wołodkowicz, published in Montreal (1969):

"Bogdan Zaborski was born in Warsaw Poland, on April 5, 1901. He studied geography at Warsaw University (1919-1925) and received his Ph.D. degree in 1925. We was assistant in the Department of Geography, University of Warsaw in the years 1924-27. He continued his post-doctorate studies in France and Germany (from late 1928 to early 1930). He was appointed acting professor of physical geography at the Jagellonian University of Cracow (1930-1933), Poland, and later, to a comparable post in Warsaw (1933-38). He was appointed professor and director of the Deparment of Human Geography at Warsaw University in 1938. In September 1939, he participated as a lieutenant of the reserve of the Corps of the Officers Geographers in the defence of Lwow (at that time in S.E. Poland). Captured by the Soviet forces, he was kept in various prisons as a political prisoner (1940-1941). He was liberated with all the other Poles there after the Soviets were attacked by the Germans in 1941. He travelled for six months in Siberia, Turkestan, and Eastern Russia in 1941 and 1942, thus acquiring some knowledge of the landscape and the population. He arrived in London, England in 1942 and was assigned to organize a map printing office for the Polish Government in Exile, a position he held until 1945. In 1946 he was appointed professor of geography at the Polish University College in London, England, and in 1948 he arrived in Montreal, where he became Associate Professor of geography at McGill University. He was appointed in 1957 Professor and Head of the Institute of Geography at the University of Ottawa. He was also a member of a qualifying commission responsible for recruitment of geographers for the Canadian Civil Service. During his long career he worked (on a part-time basis) as geographical adviser in a regional planning board, in cartographic laboratories, editorial offices, a boundary delimitation committee and was often invited to lecture in various colleges. He belongs to many societies and has travelled widely in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. He possesses a private library composed of about 8,000 volumes (more than half dealing with the Soviet Union), a map collection of about 20,000 sheets, 7,000 colour slides (mainly from his own journeys), rock samples and geographical clippings from dailies and periodicals since 1948. He has published a great number of works and maps related to several aspects of geography. They deal with physical, human and regional geography, and number about 140. He is now preparing a paper which will be a geographical approach to urban and rural settlements and an atlas of the geographical types of landscapes in Canada. His main speciality, however, is the geography of Euroasia and he is working at present on a linguistic map of Eurasian peoples, accompanied by a text. He is also preparing a project for a new pattern (network) of streets in a newly-built town, to improve the efficiency of communication and civil defence."

Other References:

The Scientific Institute of Oskar Halecki in Canada