Montreal's Response to the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was fought between the democratically-elected Republicans, a popular front coalition of republicans, socialists, syndicalists, and communists, and the Nationalists, a fascist rebel group led by General Francisco Franco. Franco had the support of Germany's Hitler and Italy's Mussolini. In Montreal, there was support for both sides in the conflict, notwithstanding the fact that Canada was officially (and legally) neutral in the war. The author examines how Montrealers reacted to the conflict. The city's Catholic hierarchy, both French and English, followed the Vatican's lead by supporting the Nationalists. Most Francophone and Anglophone Catholics followed their Church's lead. Support for the Republican Spanish Popular Front was confined to a group of predominately English-speaking professionals and intellectuals, trade unionists and socialists, while the city's "smug Protestant Anglo-Saxon upper class" turned its back, by and large, on efforts to raise sympathy for the Republican cause. The Montreal Star and The Gazette both preached non-intervention in Spain. The author outlines the organization of the different factions within the city to this European conflict, which is now seen as a harbinger of the Second World War.

Master's Thesis

Concordia University

Montreal

1976

iv-172p.

en