Interview conducted by Art Grenke in Toronto, Ontario with Hans Ibing, former member of the Deutschkanadische Arbeiter und Farmer Verband and the German Canadian Federation. Subjects focused on include the German-Canadian labour movement and Ibing's experiences in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Ibing discusses his early life in Germany, his father's involvement in the Social Democratic Movement in Germany, Ibing's decision to emigrate from Germany to Canada in 1930, the details of his emigration including travel, Canadian propaganda in Germany encouraging immigration, arriving in Halifax and settling in Winnipeg, his first impressions of Canada, working as a farmhand and then in the city for the creamery Piggly Wiggly, lack of job opportunities across Canada for single men, traveling from town to town for work, living on vouchers and relying on food stamps and food kitchens, the resulting demoralization of these living conditions, the struggle for socialism against Fascism, Ibing's perception of the socialist state in the early twentieth century, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the differences between poverty and unemployment in Canada in the 1980's versus that in the 1930's, traveling to Spain as a Canadian volunteer to fight in the International Brigade against fascist forces, the basic needs of the Spanish people, training and integration into the Spanish Army where he volunteered as a truck driver attached to a transport regiment with the Fifth Army where he transported men and supplies to the front, primitive supplies used by the Spanish Army, Ibing's attempts to return to Canada including his internment in Paris as a foreigner, difficulties obtaining the necessary papers for his return to Canada due to the Canadian government's law forbidding participation in the Spanish Civil War, and the revocation of residency of immigrants, Ibing's subsequent return to Canada in 1938, help from a sympathetic French Canadian official in Halifax, returning to Winnipeg where he resumed work as a truck driver, the beginning of the Second World War, Canadian propaganda, his move to Toronto, Ontario, working as an apprentice to a printer, moving from commercial printing to newspaper printing, forming an anti-fascist group to support the Canadian war effort, differences between the recovery of Western and Eastern Germany following the Second World War; and Ibing's general reminiscences and personal beliefs. <165mn>
