A. A. MacLeod | |
---|---|
Ontario MPP | |
In office 1943–1951 |
|
Preceded by | Arthur Roebuck |
Succeeded by | John Yaremko |
Constituency | Bellwoods |
Personal details | |
Born |
Albert Alexander MacLeod April 2, 1902 Black Rock, Victoria County, Nova Scotia |
Died | March 13, 1970 Toronto, Ontario |
(aged 67)
Political party | Labor-Progressive |
Spouse(s) | Virginia MacLean |
Occupation | Newspaper editor |
Albert Alexander "A. A." MacLeod (April 2, 1902 – March 13, 1970) was a prominent member of the Communist Party of Canada and, later, of its legal group the Labor-Progressive Party.
MacLeod was born in 1902 in Black Rock, Nova Scotia and worked in the Sydney Mines steel plant in his early teens.
He was thought to have been the youngest Canadian soldier to enlist in the Canadian Army during World War I joining the 185th Battalion of the Cape Breton Highlanders at the war's outbreak. He returned to Canada shortly before the end of the war and later worked for the Young Men's Christian Association first in Halifax and then as an executive member in Chicago.
MacLeod moved to New York City to become managing editor of The World Tomorrow, a prominent socialist-pacifist magazine.
While in New York, he met and then married Virginia MacLean who was originally from Cape Breton. The couple were both pacifists and supporters of the Socialist Party of America. MacLean moved further left as a result of the Scottsboro Boys case joining the Defense League for the Scottsboro Boys with which the Communist Party USA was heavily involved. The MacLeods were also radicalized by the poverty of the Great Depression and by their opposition to the growing threat of fascism.
In 1933, MacLeod resigned from The World Tomorrow and the couple returned to Nova Scotia where they became active in the labour movement and campaigned for J.B. McLachlan, a militant union leader and Communist who was running as a "labour" candidate for the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. The MacLeods joined the Communist Party during this period.