Category Archives: Spanish Civil War

Books, research and other tidbits

Phoenix Rising: Un niño español en la España devastada por la guerra y el soldado canadiense que le salvó la vida (3 minutos de lectura)

Este artículo se publicó en inglés en julio de 2020. Se tradujo con Google Translate y publicado el 12 de octubre de 2022. Luchando por La Democracia de Jim Higgins fue publicado por PUZ el 27 de septiembre de 2022.

***This piece was published in English in July 2020***

Sucedió por primera vez en enero de 2018. Estaba en una cena organizada por mi amiga Katrina en San Miguel de Allende, México. Katrina había dirigido la conversación hacia mi proyecto de publicar las memorias de mi padre, ahora previstas para el otoño de 2020 y tituladas Fighting for Democracy: The True Story of Jim Higgins (1907-1982), A Canadian Activist in Spain’s Civil War. (Actualización: el libro se publicó en septiembre de 2020).

Les estaba contando a los otros invitados un poco sobre él, cuando un compañero canadiense preguntó: “¿Cómo se llamaba tu padre?” Dije: “Jim Higgins”. Él respondió: “Estoy seguro de que acabo de escuchar sobre él en las noticias”. Dije: “¡Imposible!”. y rápidamente se olvidó de él.

Continue reading →

Luchando por la Democracia: Memorias de un Activista Canadiense en la Guerra Civil Española

Exciting news! The Spanish edition of Jim Higgins’ book, Luchando por la Democracia, has just been published by the University of Zaragoza Press (PUZ), AND I’ve just made plans to be in Spain from October 14 through November 8 to celebrate.  It’s all happened rather quickly.

Jim Higgins-Luchando por la Democracia-Memorias de un Activista Canadiense en la Guerra Civil Española (September 2022) University of Zaragoza Press (PUZ).

Buy the Spanish edition here.

Continue reading →

Big thanks to Ben Pratt in Augusta, Maine for supporting Jim Higgins’ book. No Pasaran!

The man holding Fighting for Democracy is Ben Pratt, a full time firefighter/paramedic in Augusta; Maine’s state capital.

So what is my father’s book doing in a fire station in Maine and why is it featured in this image.

Continue reading →

1968: Postcards from Franco’s Spain

It was September 1968, and I’d been away from Canada for exactly a year. That previous winter, I’d studied French in Paris at L’Alliance Francaise, while living with a family and working as their au pair, or nanny.  Now, Paris was my base for exploring Europe on five dollars a day which meant hitchhiking, youth hostels and occasional meals consisting of the contents of cookie packets.

continue reading

Book Review: “A Long Petal of the Sea,” by Isabel Allende

Spaniards were long kept in the dark about their complicated history: first, because Franco’s one-sided version was the only one taught until after he died in 1975. After that, as part of Spain’s transition to democracy, the government enacted a “pact of forgetting,” hoping it would help the country move on from its painful past.

Continue reading →

My Radical Dad: A Father’s Day Tribute

In the 1950s, he was Daddy, the quiet father who worked hard to provide for his family. At home in Peterborough, Ontario, he somehow found time to fix up our old two-storey clapboard house and tend a big vegetable garden for our family.

Continue reading →

Canadian Mac-Pap Honoured by Stranger in Spain. Why?

Lea la traducción al español aqui.

I knew little about Juan José Ibañez Esnal, the man behind the Spanish translation of Jim Higgins’ book, Fighting for Democracy, A Canadian Activist in Spain’s Civil War. I set out to learn more about his family but more importantly, I wanted to know why he did it. His reasons are somewhat surprising.

Continue reading →

Boom! Book About Canadians in the Spanish Civil War Translated!

Lea la traducción al español aquí.


I’m still rubbing my eyes in disbelief — I have in hand a full Spanish translation of Fighting for Democracy by Jim Higgins. Si, el libro Luchando por la Democracia de Jimmy Higgins, ha sido traducido al translado al espagñol!

It’s all because of a man named Juan José Ibañez Esnal who lives in San Sebastián, a port city in Basque Country in northern Spain near the French border. Here’s how it all went down.

Continue reading →

Honouring War Veterans Who Stood Up to Hitler

This Remembrance Day, as always, the veterans of the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion are not amongst those officially honoured here in Canada; unless they also fought in the First or Second World Wars, as many did.

Today, November 11, 2020, I went to the Mac-Pap memorial in Toronto on the grounds of the Ontario Legislature to honour them in my own small way. The memorial is a boulder from the battlefields near the town of Gandesa Spain; a place where the Mac-Paps fought and where many lost their lives.

Continue reading →

A Funeral, a Stranger and an Inspiration

I remember it well. It was a sunny day, thirty-eight years ago today, and much hotter than usual for late September. I was sweltering in my red wool sweater and pleated plaid skirt, and standing with my siblings and a few others in Peterborough’s Little Lake cemetery where my father, Jim Higgins, was to be buried beside our mother. There was one person I didn’t know—a young woman—and it’s only in recent years that I’ve come to know who she was and why she was there.

Continue Reading