Jules Paivio left Canada at the age of nineteen to fight in the Spanish Civil War, where he was captured, saved from execution, and placed in a prisoner-of-war camp. Paivio was the last surviving Canadian veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and of the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion. The Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion or Mac-Paps were a battalion of Canadians who fought as part of the XV International Brigade on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. Except for France, no other country had a greater proportion of its population volunteer in Spain as did Canada. The XV International Brigade was involved in the Battle of Jarama, in which nine Canadians are known to have been killed. The Spanish War, 1936-39, became the showdown between the rising wave of Fascism, and those who decided it had to be stopped. Thousands of international volunteers came to Spain, including 1600 Canadians, to fight the Fascists. By the end of the War half had simply vanished. In 2012, Jules Paivio was honoured by the Spanish government by being granted honorary citizenship. Jules Paivio died on 4 September 2013, at the age of 97.
Unedited interview footage shot during the making of The Lost Graves of the International Grave, Part IV of the Battlefield Mysteries series.
