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 readingFor those intrigued by Jim Higgins’ memoir, Fighting for Democracy, and who want to learn more, have a skip through this list of books by and about Canadians in the Spanish Civil War.
I’ll bet there’s at least one that piques your interest. Cooped up Covid hostages with low budgets will be entertained by the free one from Athabasca University Press.
Continue readingMoving. Gripping. Inspiring. These are just some of the descriptors I’ve heard from strangers who’ve read “Fighting for Democracy.” Friends have jumped in, too; some of whom wouldn’t normally read a book like this.
Continue readingThis 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 readingI 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 ReadingJim 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!)
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Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War is an essential read for anyone interested in why hundreds of Canadians would volunteer to fight in a distant foreign war and why Canada passed (largely ineffective) legislation to prevent them from going.
continue readingIt 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.
Continue readingI’m thrilled to have a feature article, A Mac-Pap Amongst the Lincolns, published in The Volunteer, the magazine of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in New York, Click on it, and learn why Jim Higgins ended up seeking refuge there during the winter of 1940/41.
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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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