Throughout his five decades of police work, Kazimierz 'Chuck' Konkel travelled the world teaching North American policing procedures to other countries.Courtesy of family
During a long, often dangerous career with international law enforcement, Toronto Police Staff Sergeant Kazimierz “Chuck” Konkel’s commitment to combatting organized crime never wavered. Even a rare form of soft tissue cancer that afflicts only one in 2 million people couldn’t stop him from working until his final days. He died after experiencing a hemorrhage in Toronto on July 21, just short of his 74th birthday.
Throughout his five decades of police work, Mr. Konkel travelled the world teaching North American policing procedures to other countries. He worked closely with agencies like the RCMP, Interpol, and the FBI, occasionally giving lectures at their training facility in Quantico, Virginia. Fluent in six languages including Cantonese, he became an expert on East European and Asian cartels.
One operation that occupied him intensely was the tracking of cars stolen in Toronto then shipped to Russia for nefarious purposes. His execution of international search warrants led all the way down to a Russian submarine. Mr. Konkel was ultimately successful in locating crates of stolen vehicles and discovering who was behind the ring.
In another case, the warrant led to the discovery of an illegal missile site in Russia. After the missile incident, Mr. Konkel turned down the opportunity to handle another Russian file. “He’d been to Poland on behalf of the FBI and trained their National Polish police. Because of that, the Russian mafia did not want him around,” explained entrepreneur Robin Devine, Mr. Konkel’s wife of 47 years.
Konkel was instrumental in the formation of Canada’s Hate Crime laws, one of the first in the world.Courtesy of family
“We were warned to get out of Poland,” she said. “At the time, we’d been staying in a compound across the street from the Russian Embassy. This was in the final throes of Communism falling. Our room was bugged and the doors had to be opened from the outside. We slept all night with the lights on. Nobody said a word on the way to the airport. Six weeks later, the Polish Police Commissioner, with whom Chuck had been working, was shot and killed at close range.” The incident was alarming enough that police surveillance cameras were installed in their house and on the street to ensure the safety of the Konkel family. Precautions such as checking the undercarriage of Mr. Konkel’s car for a bomb became routine.
Later in his career, Mr. Konkel took to writing international thrillers under the name KGE Konkel, and contributed book reviews to this paper. Detail oriented, fact driven and renowned for his expertise on geopolitical affairs, he possessed the ideal background to develop engrossing plots that simultaneously aimed to educate readers about history and the evils of undemocratic regimes.
“He was forever making notes in a horrible chicken scrawl so they’re practically illegible,” daughter Laura Konkel said. “He loved investigating, digging for obscure facts and clues. The world was always a little puzzle for my father and if he could find things to help others, so much the better. He did a lot of work piecing together the identities of unknown soldiers in order to help their families find peace, something that was recognized by the Chicago Tribune on Remembrance Day.”
Konkel was detail oriented, fact driven and renowned for his expertise on geopolitical affairs. The ideal background to write international thrillers, which he published under the name KGE Konkel.Supplied
Intelligence and erudition made Mr. Konkel a popular guest on CBC and CTV as well as on U.S. talk shows hosted by TV titans Larry King and David Letterman. Long before a stab at Federal politics as a Conservative, Mr. Konkel, a long-time supporter of refugees, was instrumental in the formation of Canada’s Hate Crime laws, one of the first in the world.
“His upbringing fundamentally altered his experience and created a desire to do the right thing because he dealt with so much adversity growing up. He had a strong character and a moral compass to help him make the right decision,” Ms. Konkel said. “There was a very rational analysis to everything he did. His decisions were always defensible because he had a very analytical mind.”
The wartime experience of Chuck Konkel’s father, Edward, a much-decorated Polish war veteran, exerted a powerful influence on his only child. Edward Konkel served with the French Army and Polish brigades before joining both the French and Dutch underground resistance, twice escaping Prisoner of War camps. He was eventually sent to the only SS concentration camp in the Netherlands. It was a zero-tolerance prison where every inmate was shot. For unexplained reasons, perhaps because of a commanding physical presence, Edward Konkel was spared. At the end of the war, he was told if he went back to Poland he would be killed by the new Communist regime for being a Pole who had served in the west. He stayed away but remained proud of being Polish, and proud of his country’s transition from Communism to Democracy during the years 1989 to 1991.
Edward Konkel met his wife Ann, a high school principal in Rotterdam during the late 1940s. Their son, Kazimierz (Chuck) Gerard Edward, also known by the initials ‘KGE’ was subsequently born in Rotterdam on Aug. 27, 1950. The boy was two years old when the family immigrated to Hamilton, Ontario. They were officially displaced persons, just three of more than 157,000 refugees who came to Canada seeking a new life after the war.
Lacking the necessary paperwork to pursue a career in education, Chuck’s mother Ann worked as cleaner before eventually earning a degree in nursing while her husband obtained work in Hamilton’s steel industry. Even though he was technically Dutch, their son Chuck strongly identified with his Polish heritage. His first experience of racism was in a Canadian schoolyard where he was picked on and regularly punched in the nose by bullies for being both a foreigner and a Catholic. Despite the cruelty, or perhaps fuelled by the urge to understand it, he obtained a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Waterloo. He was also an expert on the history of the Second World War and a passionate advocate for freedom.
While obtaining his degree, he concurrently served as a lieutenant in the Canadian Armed Forces before receiving an honourable discharge for a severe knee injury. In the early 1970s, he read an advertisement for people to join the Royal Hong Kong Police. The idea of learning about a different culture appealed to him. He applied successfully and worked in Hong Kong as an inspector from 1974 to 1977 before returning to Canada. He then joined the Toronto Police Service and was eventually promoted to Staff Sergeant. His work was his passion. He never officially retired even as illness overtook him.
Konkel died after experiencing a hemorrhage in Toronto on July 21, just short of his 74th birthday.Courtesy of family
Poland was never far from the thoughts of Mr. Konkel. Not only did he help train that country’s police force but in 1999, after the Cold War, he was instrumental in Poland joining NATO with the support of Canada.
Bill Graham, at that time Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave him the affectionate nickname ‘Mr. Poland’.
During an interview for a Polish newspaper about his latest novel, Who Has Buried the Dead? – From Stalin to Putin: The last great secret of World War Two, Mr. Konkel told the interviewer: “I felt I owed it to my parents and the Polish in me to write about the Polish experience in World War Two with Stalin and our input into the Allied victory. We never surrendered. I also brought Hitler, Truman and Roosevelt into the mix along with some fictitious characters.” To support the novel’s point of view he added, “There’s a hundred-page bibliography of historic documents and texts I’ve read to draw my conclusions.”
Asked to comment on today’s world and culture, Mr. Konkel said that both Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are evil. “Communism is inherently evil. I don’t know how often I was talking to students who were afraid to speak their mind at Chinese Association meetings because they could end up in jail or worse.”
During the interview, he recalled a horrifying experience during his time in Hong Kong when it was under British rule, and narrowly separated from Communist China by a harbour. “We were on a marine launch and given long poles used to bring ships back and forth to the dock. We kept hitting body parts with them. Those body parts were Chinese people fleeing Communism. I always say no one ever swam into a Communist world, they all flee from it. I’m proud that I was once a member of the Royal Hong Kong police force, but today, that police force are a bunch of brutes and animals. There’s a whole cornucopia of evils that we allow quietly to go on. We just choose not to see it. We have actually walked away from our responsibility as democratic citizens and thinking adults.”
Mr. Konkel leaves his wife Robin and daughter Laura.
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