Research
The First Canadian
By Mike Petrou, Winnipeg Free Fress 4/5/08
May 5, 2008 - 7:35:08 AM

Seventy years ago, civil war raged in Spain between a left-leaning government, supported by the Soviet Union, and a military uprising, led by General Francisco Franco and backed with arms and troops by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Almost 1,700 Canadians defied Canadian law and volunteered to fight with the Spanish government. More than 150 were from Winnipeg. In this excerpt from Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War, author Michael Petrou tells the story of Winnipeg native Bill Williamson, the first Canadian to join the war.

Bill Williamson was rebellious as a child. He was intelligent, big for his age, and even as a boy possessed a questioning, anti-authoritarian streak. His mother died when he was a child, and so he was raised by an aunt in Winnipeg, surrounded by prairie and farms. Williamson skipped school regularly, spending much of the warmer months swimming in the nearby Assiniboine and Red rivers. When he attended classes he tormented his teachers with questions, especially if religion was on the curriculum. If the Earth is round, he asked, how did Jesus ascend to heaven? How could angels fly with such tiny wings? And, when history was taught, he would reflexively take the side of the underdog: the serfs against their king; the Americans against the British; Montcalm against Wolfe.

"I got on with the teachers all right," he said years later. "But I must have driven them up the wall."

Williamson said that much of his early thinking was profoundly influenced by a man named Paddy, who was a friend of his aunt and a strong Irish republican. Williamson never knew if Paddy had been personally involved in political violence in Ireland, but he vigorously promoted the republican cause and found a receptive audience in young Williamson. "He had a sort of a hatred, or a dislike, of imperialism in general and in particular that of the British Empire, which he thought was enslaving the world," Williamson said. "I remember when I was a very young boy him pointing to the Union Jack flying over some building or the other, and he says, 'Look at that flag, boy. Wherever that flag flies there's misery and oppression.' And that had a great effect on me."

Paddy plied the precocious Williamson with books. His favourites were novels by Jack London -- White Fang and The Call of the Wild -- but also books that tackled more profound topics, such as The People of the Abyss. By the time he was 12, Williamson's aunt had married and Williamson was not getting along with her new husband. Inspired by Jack London's stories of hoboeing across the United States and a boy's fascination with trains, one morning before dawn he filled a small knapsack with food, water, and extra clothes and slipped out of the house. He walked to the freight yards and scrambled into the boxcar of a lumbering westbound train. It was late in the spring of 1921. Williamson was 13 years old and would not come home for many years.

"I more or less hoboed my way, just getting jobs from time to time and sometimes not getting a job at all, often going hungry," he later recalled. "But in spite of it, I enjoyed the thing, seeing all these sights. I went to all the great places, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. Anywhere the railway went, I went."

Williamson left Canada for years at time, working on ranches in the United States and Mexico, and on ships that sailed as far as Australia. Along the way, he developed an intense interest in photography. In the summer of 1936, he found himself in London. Newspapers there were full of stories about the escalating political turmoil in Spain. Williamson decided to go to Spain. He did not foresee a war. He imagined street protests, surging crowds, and perhaps the odd street fight. He thought he might be able to take some good photographs.

Knowing that a few Basque ships were on strike in the Cardiff harbour, Williamson headed to Wales. He approached one of the strike leaders and, using the smattering of Spanish he had picked up in Mexico, asked if he could stowaway on his ship, which was sailing for Spain the next day. The strike leader agreed and said he would tell his men to turn a blind eye. Williamson climbed aboard and crept down ladders and staircases into the ship's hold. On the way, he stumbled upon four men playing cards at a small table in a dimly lit corner. "They sort of looked up in surprise when I came down and I gave a clenched fist salute," Williamson said. "They grinned, and I said the word in Spanish for coalbunker, and they just pointed the way. I went in amongst the coal and buried myself in it, and pulled my mackinaw coat over my head."

The next morning, Williamson felt the boat lurch away from the dock. He waited until he guessed it was clear of the English Channel, then he climbed out of the bunker and turned himself in to the ship's captain. To Williamson's surprise, the captain seemed pleased to welcome him on board after he explained that he was going to Spain to help the struggling Spanish Republic. It was the morning of 18 July 1936.

At some point during the next 24 hours, the captain and crew got word that much of the Spanish military had rebelled against the government and war was threatening to engulf all of Spain. Details were sparse. When the ship arrived the following evening at the port town of Portugalete, about fifteen kilometres from Bilbao, a standoff ensued between the crew, now standing on the ship's deck, and the townspeople watching them from shore. Neither group knew which side those opposite them were on. Finally the ship edged into the harbour.

"It was an evening that will be forever etched in my mind," Williamson wrote to friends decades later. "Even now after more than 44 years the events of that evening are as clear as though it were yesterday ... As soon as we were abreast of the breakwater, the captain ordered a huge republican flag to be broken out on the main mast, amid the cheers and shouts that came to us from across the calm waters of the harbour."

Williamson stepped into a town in the midst of a celebration. The war and the revolution were mere hours old, and the people of Portugalete had not yet suffered any of the horror and depredation that come with both. The city hall was festooned with republican flags, Basque flags, anarchist flags, and communist flags, and the streets were filled with people.

"I looked down into the square at this time. It must have been about three o'clock in the afternoon; and all the girls were dancing in their summer dresses; and many of them with their summer dresses on had a rifle on their shoulders and a red band around their arm," he said. "And above everything else, I remember cars and trucks racing through the streets with their headlights on in bright daylight, and their sirens going and the claxons sounding, and all the time there was this terrific hullabaloo. It was almost as if it was the Russian Revolution happening all over again."

The women in dresses and heels were gathering and distributing rifles, but when Williamson said that he wanted to enlist in a militia, he was directed to Bilbao. There he was taken to a government office and asked if he knew how to shoot a gun. Unlike most of the locals in Bilbao, but like thousands of other Canadians who grew up on the Prairies shooting groundhogs and small game, Williamson knew how to handle a rifle and was an excellent marksman. He proved this at a makeshift firing range someone had set up in the basement and, consequently, was given a prized Mauser rifle while others had to make do with shotguns and antiques.

Williamson joined a militia that dubbed itself the "Ochandiano Column," though its name would change at least twice. At the time, the political affiliation of his comrades seemed inconsequential. There was no real central command, and Williamson marched beside columns of men from anarchist, socialist, and Basque nationalist militias. They marched on San Sebastián, where the rebels still held a few strong points, mostly hotels. They cleared these out in several days of disorganized street battles, using homemade bombs, which often exploded before they could be thrown, and wagons full of burning hay, which they rolled into nationalist-held buildings.

Williamson spent the next nine months fighting on the Basque and Asturian fronts. Almost immediately he met a young Basque woman named Dolores, who fought in Williamson's column. They might have fallen in love, though Williamson described their relationship only as a close "association." Dolores was the last woman to remain in Williamson's column, as most of the others who had taken part in the fighting of July and August were transferred behind the lines. Late that fall, Dolores was sent on a mission away from the main column. She was wounded and died shortly afterward. In interviews more than 50 years later, Williamson said he was still sad and bitter that he was unable to attend her funeral.