Jules Paivio, last Mac Pap Veteran, dies

Jules Paivio

We reprint this story from the Ottawa Citizen because the celebration of the Mac Paps is part of the 90 year history of the Young Communist League of Canada, being celebrated this year.

Jules Paivio, cartographer, architect, teacher, and Canada’s last veteran of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), died last week at 97. No bands played. Unconscionable, but there you go. The official silence over the passing of this, the last member of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, was in keeping with the public shunning endured for 75 years.

Raised by Finnish parents in Sudbury to believe in justice, liberty and fair play for all, Jules sneaked out of Canada at 19 to join the Canadian Mac-Pap Battalion in Spain. Objective? Stop fascism in its tracks.

One has only to think of the great names of the 1930s — Hemingway, Bethune, Malraux — to understand that the Spanish Civil War turned the world on its end. In total, 1,700 Canadians joined 36,000 other foreign nationals to oppose Hitler’s and Mussolini’s efforts to prop up Generalissimo Franco, the new fascist dictator on the block.