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 ReadingTag Archives: Great Depression
“There are few workers’ memoirs as excellent” ~ James L. Turk
Jim Higgins (1907-1982) lived the history of Canadian labour, so it’s fitting that his book, Fighting for Democracy, should launch this Labour Day Weekend, 2020.
Jim came to Canada from England in 1928 at age twenty-one. It didn’t take long for him to experience his first lesson in collective action. He’d arrived with others under the Canadian government’s wheat harvest scheme and while waiting to be assigned to wheat farms across Canada, they stood up to officials who wanted them to stop smoking. (It was a different time!)
continue readingPhoenix Rising: A Spanish Boy in War Torn Spain and the Canadian Soldier Who Saved His Life (3 min read)
It first happened in January 2018. I was at a dinner party hosted by my friend, Katrina, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Katrina had steered the conversation towards my plans to publish my father’s memoir which is primarily about his experience of the depression of the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
I was telling the other guests a bit about him, when a fellow Canadian asked, “What was your father’s name?” I said, “Jim Higgins.” He replied, “I’m sure I just heard about him on the news.” I said, “Impossible!” and promptly forgot about it.
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“Fighting for Democracy: The True Story of Jim Higgins (1907-1982), A Canadian Activist in Spain’s Civil War” TBP August 2020
Jim Higgins defied Canadian law to fight for democracy in the Spanish Civil War. On return, he was branded a communist, hounded by the RCMP, and welcomed by Lincoln Battalion comrades when he sought refuge in New York.
Continue reading“I was riveted. There are few workers’ memoirs as excellent…engaging, informative, and very well written.” James L. Turk, Centre for Free Expression, Ryerson University and Author, Free Speech in Fearful Times
“The fact that (Jim) was involved in secret ops makes this book particularly memorable…a key read for historians looking for new details of the Battle of the Ebro.” Jason Webster, Author, Violencia: A New History of Spain
Hounded by the RCMP
I received Jim Higgins’s RCMP file in Spring 2019 under a Freedom of Information request. Not only did the Royal Canadian Mounted Police file document many of his activities during the Great Depression, and after, it also held an intriguing glimpse into his romantic life, a couple of years before he met his wife, Reta Palliser.
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