| The news about the sudden death of Igor and Iwona Drecki has cast a shadow of sadness upon the Polish Community in New Zealand, particularly in Auckland and Wellington.
Iwona, nee Grabowska, was born in Warsaw in July 1966. Igor was born in Rzeszów in October the same year.
While Igor was still at primary school, his father, Roman, was promoted at his work and the family moved from Rzeszów to Warsaw. There, Iwona and Igor met at college as students of the same form class at Liceum Norwida.
After college Iwona completed tertiary education and obtained a Diploma in Archives Keeping and Book Trade. It enabled her to get a job in one of the most prestigious galleries in Warsaw, the Polish National Art Gallery “Zachęta”. She was employed there as a librarian and the editor of exhibition catalogues published by the Gallery. Igor continued his education at the Geography Department at Warsaw University where he had chosen Cartography as his specialization.
Igor and Iwona came to New Zealand three days after their wedding in September 1989, and settled in Auckland.
From the very beginning they got involved in the life of the Polish community, and were regular attendees at Polish Church in Auckland. For a time, they both taught at the Polish School that Igor had re-started in the Polish House in Auckland under the guidance of Fr Dominik Sobala (SChr). A few years later, in cooperation with Fr Stanisław Wrona (SChr), who succeeded Fr Dominik as Polish chaplain in Auckland, Igor organized also a few weekend camps for the Polish Youth.
Their two daughters, Natalia and Wanda, were born in the early 1990s. The family of four lived in the Auckland suburb of Birkdale. Iwona was caring for their daughters while Igor worked and continued his studies.
Igor completed an engineering diploma at Carrington Polytechnic and a Master of Science at the Geography Department at Auckland University (1997). He has held a number of job positions, always related to cartography.
At Wises Publications Ltd he was a draughtsman producing popular street-maps of New Zealand cities and towns, particularly of the rapidly developing Auckland agglomeration. In the late 1990s the family moved to Whakatane, where Igor worked as map-maker for the Bay of Plenty Regional Council (Environment BOP). In 2003 he accepted a position at the Auckland University Geography Department in its Cartography unit. This position involved some academic responsibilities and teaching duties. He also enrolled for PhD study.
After returning to Auckland, Iwona started work as a dental assistant at the family-owned surgery of Dr Julius Yoon in Takapuna. While at the Geography Department of Auckland University, Igor initiated and conducted a major project of digitally scanning all government produced maps of New Zealand and the Pacific. This project involved cooperation between many New Zealand government departments, including the NZ Army and National Library in Wellington. Nearly 20,000 maps were scanned over the period of a few years. He was the main driving force behind this project, which created a major cartographic resource accessible online for people to use.
The success of the project highlighted Igor’s abilities as a New Zealand cartographic heritage expert, and helped him to obtain a new position in the Auckland University Library to take curatorial care of the large map collection held there.
In the meantime, Igor was also involved in the activities of the New Zealand Cartographic Society. He was elected the President of the Society for several terms (2013-2018). He also held the position of Vice-President or Secretary of the Society. He initiated and participated in some works on the history of the Society and the history of cartography in New Zealand.
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Together with his colleagues from the Society, he organized in New Zealand several highly ranked Cartographic Conferences, known as ‘Geocart’, which attracted participants from many important cartographic centres around the world.
His involvement in the Cartographic Society lead to his nomination as the official New Zealand delegate to prestigious International Cartographic Association conferences. At such conferences, as he represented New Zealand, he met with his Polish counterparts whom he knew from his student years at Warsaw University.
In fact, he kept in close contact with a number of Polish cartographers who proved to be his trusted and treasured colleagues. For a number of years, he was also the editor of the International Cartographic Association News (ICA News) – an official magazine published by this global cartographic organization.Igor was the author and co-author of numerous professional articles and books in the field of cartography and geospatial information. He was also a speaker at many cartographic conferences around the world.
Igor and Iwona always kept in touch with their Polish compatriots in New Zealand. In year 2000, they co-founded Quo Vadis Publications, an Auckland-based, non-profit driven publishing firm established to help promote Polish stories in New Zealand. Memoirs and books of some poetry by Polish authors were edited and published by Igor and the Quo Vadis team.
In recent years, Igor helped with projects aiming to digitise the archives of a number of Polish Organizations in New Zealand.
In 2021 Igor moved to Wellington to take up a position at Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington as Curator of the country’s most precious national cartographic heritage. He was entrusted to look after the most complete collection of historical and contemporary maps of New Zealand and the Pacific. He regarded this job as the pinnacle of his cartographic dream.
From 2021 Igor and Iwona lived in Ranui Heights, Porirua, while their adult daughters remained in Auckland.
In Wellington, Igor and Iwona became regulars at the Polish language Mass at Avalon and made many friends amongst the Polish community.
In July this year, they went to Auckland for 60th birthday celebrations and to assist Igor’s seriously ill father, Roman, with hospital appointments. On July 26th, on the way back home, they died in a car accident in the vicinity of Mt Ruapehu.
At their funeral on 10 August 2023, St Thomas More Church in Auckland was filled with a large number of friends and colleagues, employers’ representatives from Auckland and Wellington, and a large contingent of Polish people, all of whom joined the grieving family. They were put to rest at North Shore Memorial Park in Auckland. May they rest in peace.
Jacek Drecki | 
