Tag Archives: Communist Party of Canada

A Rival for Norman Bethune?

Book Review: Not for King or Country: Edward Cecil-Smith, The Communist Party of Canada, and The Spanish Civil War by Tyler Wentzell. University of Toronto Press, 2020

Edward Cecil-Smith was commander of Canada’s Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).  Other than his battle reports, that’s about all we’ve known. Oh, other than the gossipy (slanderous?) bit about him deserting his troops. It’s bare bones, one dimensional and some would say, unjust.

Tyler Wentzell’s biography, Not for King or Country, puts flesh on those bones, lays the gossip to rest with facts (leaving it for the reader to decide), and fills a void in the history of Canadians—known as Mac-Paps—who volunteered to fight in Spain’s civil war.

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Why a 30-year Wait for the First Book about the Mac-Paps?

I have no doubt that my Dad, Jim Higgins, was writing about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War in early February 1939, while still on the boat back to Canada .

Major Cecil-Smith,  a journalist before volunteering for Spain, was to be editor of a book about the Canadian volunteers who fought in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.  He asked Dad to make some contributions; they wanted it out as quickly as possible.

Why did Jim Higgins write this inscription on the flyleaf of  The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion by Victor Hoar
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