In this episode, Kaarina Mikalson introduces the podcast, the project behind it, and provides a brief historical overview of the Spanish Civil War. Stay tuned for the next episode, about the International Brigades and the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.

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Andrea Hasenbank joins us to talk about pamphlet culture radical movements throughout the 1930s, and traces a pretty compelling trajectory from Canadian leftist parties and organizations, through the Second World War and the building of the social welfare state and into our present (more dire) times. She reminds us how hard we have to fight for an equitable and democratic society, and how capitalism and austerity operate to undo and erase that work.

Kevin and Kaarina discuss Meet Me on the Barricades, a 1938 novel by Charles Yale Harrison about a big-dreaming oboe player with a passionate but passive interest in the Spanish Civil War. 

In a bonus track, Kevin and Kaarina read an excerpt from Meet Me on the Barricades. 

Kevin Levangie joins Kaarina Mikalson to discuss the Canadians who fought in the Spanish Civil War and the organizations they fought with: the International Brigades and the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion.

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Part 1 of our interview with Tyler Wentzell, military historian and legal scholar. Wentzell talks about Ed Cecil-Smith, a Canadian volunteer, commanding officer in the International Brigades, and significant member of the Communist Party in Canada. He is also the subject of Wentzell's forthcoming book. 

Photo from the Tamiment Library.

Kaarina Mikalson talks with Kevin Levangie about the life of Ivor "Tiny" Anderson, a Danish-Canadian volunteer who wrote fascinating letters home to his family and lived a short but eventful life. 

Kevin and Kaarina (re)record their conversation about This Time a Better Earth, Ted Allan's 1939 Spanish Civil War novel. 

Kaarina chats with Hugh Goldring of Ad Astra Comix about Anarchism leading up to the Spanish Civil War, during the war, and in Canada and North America today. Hugh also shares his thoughts on anti-fascism today.