Edward Cecil-Smith was a Christian, journalist, playwright, member of the Communist Party of Canada and a volunteer in the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, where he served alongside 17,000 other Canadians and 45,000 internationals. Why did he and other Canadians fight in a foreign war that was not for their king or country? In the second of a two-part special video edition of the On War & Society Podcast, Kyle Falcon sits down with Tyler Wentzell to discuss this forgotten man and his forgotten war, the subject of his book Not For King or Country: Edward Cecil-Smith, The Communist Party of Canada and the Spanish Civil War.
Tyler Wentzell is an independent scholar based in Toronto. He is a Canadian infantry officer and a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. This is his first book.