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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. 

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.

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. Subscribe in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/listen-in/id1354987724?mt=2

Though the International Brigades provided very little military training, many volunteers brought their own experience. Kevin Levangie digs into the military backgrounds of Canadian volunteers, telling which wars they fought on, which sides they ended up on, and how their politics came up against their militarism.

Kevin Levangie traces the typical (if such a generalization is possible) journey and experience of a Canadian volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. He discusses the Canadian's resistance to discipline, how scarcity of resources affected volunteers, and the battles they engaged in.