Maria Magdalena Skarzynski

Maria Skarzynski passed away peacefully on the morning of Wednesday, December 10th, 2025, at the age of 86 years, after an extended battle with cardiovascular disease. She will forever be lovingly remembered by her son, Mark and wife Willow; by her granddaughters, Sophia and Scout; by multiple close relatives; many Polish immigrants and members of the Polish community; as well as by countless people whose lives she touched with her generosity, humor, intelligence and love.

She was predeceased by her brother, Marek (December 10th, 1957); her father, Kazimierz (June 10th,1962); and her mother, Zofia (November 3rd, 1999).

Maria was born in Warsaw, Poland, on April 25th, four months before the start of the second world war. During the war her father worked as secretary general of the International Red Cross. He produced a highly accurate report concerning the murder of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn. This report placed full responsibility for these war crimes at the feet of Stalin and the Russian secret forces. As a direct result, Maria’s family was smuggled out of Russian occupied Poland immediately after the war, never to return to live there freely in their lifetimes. This was a loss that she always carried deep within her.

After several years of exile and waiting in various European countries, the whole family was reunited in Canada in 1949. Maria’s early experiences started on a ranch near Kisbey, Saskatchewan. She became a Canadian Citizen in 1951, something that she was always very proud of. In 1952 the family moved to Calgary. As the years passed both Maria and her brother Marek received most of their education at traditional boarding schools.

Maria attended Sacred Heart Convent until graduation, then became a nurse in the late 1950’s. She worked in multiple hospitals from Calgary to Vancouver and all the way up to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. In the mid 1960’s she settled in Calgary and worked at the Holy Cross and Foothills hospitals. She was described as an excellent nurse: kind, giving, and intelligent. She was both lead nurse of the open-heart surgery team, and head nurse of neurosurgery at various points during her career. She worked with some of the country’s leading neurosurgeons at the time, one of whom, Dr. Charles Taylor, described her as, in a word: “irreplaceable”.

In the early 1980’s Maria left nursing and went into medical sales with 3M Canada. She also started a long and deeply committed phase of her life where she dedicated much of her energy to supporting Polish causes - both in Canada, and in Poland. This phase was to continue into the last years of her life. She was president of the Calgary branch of the friends of the University of Lublin, raising tens of thousands of dollars to support the only free university behind the iron curtain at that time. She was vice-president in the Solidarity foundation in Calgary, sending hundreds of parcels to imprisoned Solidarity activists, and was president of the Polish Canadian Association in the late 1980s- advocating tirelessly for provincial grants to support the polish community. As the official delegate of the Canadian Polish Congress, she participated in a small group of volunteers who sponsored over 1500 Polish Immigrants to Canada, personally signing for fourteen families herself. She greatly enjoyed a succession of summers as the camp nurse with the Polish Scouting Association and was zealously involved in the “Poland in the Rockies” series, along with multiple other Polish cultural initiatives too numerous to list.

Maria loved chess, horses, songs and stories with meaning, humor and history (especially Polish history). She took care of her mother’s elder care needs daily. She deeply loved her son Mark and her granddaughters, Sophia and Scout and her many friends. Above all, she loved listening to people and helping in any way she could. Even into her 80’s, she was focused on others. People felt seen and enjoyed in her presence. She was both deeply traditional in some matters, and colorfully rebellious in others. As did her mother Zofia, she always had a dog nearby who adored her, and for whom she regularly broke all the rules. At times unpredictable, she was both a romantic and a pragmatist, an idealist and a realist. She was very Polish, while remaining passionately Canadian.

 In her last home at the Colonel Belcher Independent living center, she interviewed other residents about their lives, publishing these alongside pictures of the residents in the center’s newsletter. She continued to spend many hours at the Polish church, at Polish Veteran’s meetings and with spiritual leaders. One of her last critical thinking queries at age 86 was: Are young people being truly heard and understood by the church and the community? She won many awards, much recognition, and never mentioned any of it. She was constantly striving to live a meaningful life and to stay young in her heart and mind. She was a truly unique character.

A Funeral Mass for Maria was held at Our Lady Queen of Peace Polish church on Wednesday, December 17th, 2025, at 11:00 a.m.

In lieu of flowers, if you wish, please donate to the charity of your choice or to the Dominican Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (2108 Uxbridge drive NW, Calgary, T2N 3Z4).