Canada to hold national day of mourning for Kaczynski

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday offered his condolences to his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk and announced a national day of mourning on April 15 for Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski.

A plane crash on Saturday killed all 96 people on board including Kaczynski and much of Poland’s political and military elite, in the country’s worst tragedy of the post-war era.

Harper told Prime Minister Tusk that "our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who lost their lives and all the Polish people during these difficult times."

He recalled in their telephone conversation, according to a statement, "how President Kaczynski was a great friend of Canada… and a great defender of freedom and democracy."

Tusk was to meet with Harper on Wednesday but cancelled his trip to Ottawa in the wake of the tragedy.

In the latest census figures available, there were more than 984,000 Polish-Canadians or Canadians with Polish ancestry in 2006, or more than three percent of the population, according to Statistics Canada.