Patricia Pleszczynska taken in Italy at her mother's family house.Bernard St. Laurent
There is a great divide between the English and French networks at CBC/Radio-Canada. Reporters and actors occasionally work on both sides, but the division is most striking at the top of its management ranks. Patricia Pleszczynska, who died in Montreal on Nov. 26. at the age of 67, was an exception. At first a researcher then a producer and manager on the English side, she was eventually responsible for all of Quebec. Culturally and linguistically fluent in French, she later moved to Radio-Canada to become head of radio, a culturally sacred place for francophones in Canada.
“I believe she’s the only person to have ever held a very senior management position in both CBC and Radio-Canada,” said her husband, retired CBC broadcaster Bernard St-Laurent.
Patricia Pleszczynska was born in Sherbrooke on Dec. 26, 1952. Her father, Stanislas Pleszczynski, was a Polish war hero and was so outraged Russia had made Poland a vassal state that he spoke only Polish to his children. When Patricia was old enough to go to school, she couldn’t speak French or English, only Polish and a smattering of Italian from her mother.
She attended a French elementary school in Lennoxville, a suburb of Sherbrooke. In the end, she spoke four languages fluently – Polish, French, Italian and English – and could write effortlessly in three of them.
The chaos of the Second World War set off a chain of events that led to her being a polyglot. Her father was a cavalry officer in the Polish Army and escaped through Hungary, finding his way to Marseille. Officers left in Poland were executed by the Russians in Katyn Forest. From Marseille, Capt. Pleszczynski was first posted to Syria, then a French protectorate.
When France fell in June, 1940, Capt. Pleszczynski fought with the British in North Africa and then went on to Italy. He and other Polish officers were allowed to camp out in the gardens of Italian families. That is where he met Virginia Astorri, the youngest daughter of the household. They married in 1945 and moved to Canada in 1948, first to Toronto, then Lennoxville, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, where Mr. Pleszczynski, a trained agronomist, worked at the federal experimental farm.
For high school, Patricia went to Collège du Sacré-Coeur in neighbouring Sherbrooke. She then switched to English at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, where she met her future husband, Mr. St-Laurent.
The pair moved to the Gaspé to do social work with the local anglophone community. Next, they went to Quebec City, where Mr. St-Laurent studied law at Laval University and Ms. Pleszczynska worked as a potter. Looking for something less solitary, she applied for a researcher’s job at the CBC in Quebec City; they weren’t interested in hiring her, but she offered to work for nothing.
“She started as a researcher on a two-week contract, and she walked out 33 years later,” Mr. St-Laurent said. His wife always worked as a producer or manager.
Ms. Pleszczynska soon was running the English-language station in Quebec City and then moved to Montreal, where she was in charge of all English-language programming in Quebec. She was in charge of the English-language CBC in Quebec during the 1995 referendum on Quebec independence.
Because she spoke flawless French and had lived in the French culture at school, at home and in the community, she was approached to work for the French network.
Radio-Canada executive Louis Lalande was impressed with Ms. Pleszczynska when they appeared together at a CRTC hearing. He talked about how minority French populations were served outside Quebec, she spoke about serving the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
“A few weeks later, at the coffee shop at the Maison de Radio-Canada [CBC headquarters in Montreal], I said, ‘How about working for the French services?’” Mr. Lalande recalled. “It was the beginning of a very close relationship.”
Ms. Pleszczynska took the job in 2009, when there was a move toward digital services.
“Patricia made sure that in every region we blended, radio, TV and the web. She did the same thing when she was head of radio services. She was one of the first to start podcasts,” Mr. Lalande said. “She had a depth of curiosity and understanding about human beings.”
At one point, her counterpart at the English network was Fred Mattocks. He was impressed that she moved so easily between the two language services.
“It was unprecedented,” Mr. Mattocks said. “Being the head of French radio is a culturally significant role.”
Ms. Pleszczynska and her husband lived and breathed broadcasting. Mr. St-Laurent, who was a reporter and radio host, said he and his wife never had a conflict over work since he never reported directly to her. The couple lived in the Montreal district of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, oddly on a street named Patricia Avenue.
“She was a hard-nosed manager, but she was also compassionate. Patricia had an understanding of working mothers and their needs,” Mr. St-Laurent said. “I can’t tell you how many people have sent me notes saying how grateful they are and how their careers were saved because of her.”
When she retired, she and her husband operated an art gallery in the St-Laurent family home in Compton, Que. There were art shows, and book launches and the couple would work with local artists.
“My mother matched artists with local farmers. She wanted the artists to capture simple rural life,” her daughter Jasmine St-Laurent said. “Her father took her on tours of farms when he was an agronomist and taught her there was beauty in something as simple as a freshly mown field of hay.”
Ms. St-Laurent said the family always went to the Maine coast in the summer, a place reminiscent of the Adriatic coast of Italy, where her maternal grandmother grew up. The St-Laurent family continued their summer beach trips into the next generation. They booked a house last summer, but couldn’t go because of COVID-19.
“My mother was incredibly cultured. She read every play by Shakespeare and Molière. Growing up, she made up games about history,” Ms. St-Laurent said. “She was also devoted to her family and her grandchildren.”
Ms. Pleszczynska had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on Aug. 25, three months before her death. She leaves her husband; her children, Jasmine, Jacob and Marianne; five grandchildren; her brothers, Marek and Stefan; and her sister, Kristina.