Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians; by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 27, Part One. This Man Was A Communist.

        This Man Was A Communist - Part One


     Sometime in the mid-1950's a short, dark haired Canadian ended up on the shores of the Horn of Africa. He was young, broke and needed a place to stay. He went to the office of the government back then which happened to be a British outpost. For in those days part of the Horn of Africa was a British colony.
     "Oh no we don't take in people from other countries," an aloof British official told him. "You're a Canadian? No, we don't deal with colonials here. You'll have to leave here and go elsewhere." Abe Heller who was the Canadian, had a problem. Where was he going to go to? Yet he soon solved his problem by going to another part of the Horn of Africa that was under Italian control. In this place he found help.
   Heller was ill and the Italians welcomed him and gave him medical care. He needed food and they served him meals. He didn't have too many clothes and the Italians gave him some money to buy clothing. Many years later Heller fondly remembered the Italians on the Horn of Africa. He had no time for the British officials. "They were just arrogant horrible people," he said.
      Heller had really ended up in the Horn of Africa because he was a communist back . He'd been working as a sailor on a ship that was bringing goods to east Africa from Britain. in the 1950's, the British ruled large swathes of Africa. Heller and other members of the crew had rebelled against the captain who ran the ship with an iron hand. As a result of the crew's rebellion, the captain threw the crew off his boat. So Heller ended up marooned on land. Finally Heller and the other members of the crew got out of their situation.
     Now in his mid-20's, Abraham Heller had already seen more conflict than most people see in a lifetime. He grew up in Toronto in the 1930's and 40's. As a child he saw his family and his parents struggling to survive in the midst of the Great Depression. His parents had to beg to get welfare. Every month harsh welfare officials would come around to the small apartment where Abraham, his sister and his parents lived. It was smack dab in the middle of the Jewish area of Spadina.
     The officials would scour the apartment, looking into cupboards and rooms. Only when they were satisfied that the Hellers were completely broke, did they give them a measly welfare cheque for a month. The Hellers were not alone in their plight. All across Canada in the 1930's, poor people literally starved. As Pierre Berton points out in his book 'The Great Depression' the federal government spent more money in the 1930's, paying down the debt of the government-owned Canadian National Railway, than it did on social programs.