Dojack, Charles Ernest, 1918-2005 : Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Charles Dojack, publisher and public servant, took over National Publishers from his father after returning from Europe in 1945. The company was started by Frantisek Dojacek, who began his publishing career as a book seller, selling books in Ukrainian, Slovak, German and other languages. In 1906, Dojacek started Ukrainian Book Sellers, an enterprise which in time not only sold but also published Ukrainian-language books. At the same time, Dojacek also expanded into publishing newspapers. Just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, he purchased the Canadian Farmer, a Ukrainian-language newspaper. In the summer of 1914, he established the Polish Times Czas. In time, Dojacek also acquired other papers, including Der Nordwesten, a German-language paper. In 1919, National Publishers was organized to co-ordinate the publication of the different newspapers.
When Charles Dojack took over National Publishers, it was the major publisher of minority-language newspapers in Western Canada. Charles Dojack's work with the foreign-language press naturally led to his involvement in the Canada Ethnic Press Federation, an organization which he helped found in the mid-1950's and of which he served as president from 1966-1968. In this capacity, he helped to launch "Ethnic Canadiana," a project which resulted in the publication of a number of ethnic histories in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Under his leadership, the Ethnic Press Federation also arranged for ethnic editors to visit Quebec and for Quebec editors to visit Western Canada during the Centennial year.
Charles Dojack sold National Publishers in 1973, largely because of a rapid decline in the readership of many of his publications. The main reason for this, of course, was the assimilation of the children and grandchildren of immigrants. Since selling his publishing company, he has served the Federal Government in Ottawa as an advisor in different capacities in the ethnic field. In the early 1970's he helped draft a number of government papers and reports pertaining to government immigration policy. On the strength of his work with ethnic communities, Charles Dojack joined the federal civil service in the mid-1970's, working as an ethnic relations officer with the Department of Immigration, work he continued even after his retirement in the early 1980's.
