Coming in 2024 from the BumblePuppy Press

With support from The Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial fund

November , 2023 — The BumblePuppy Press, in conjunction with The Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund, is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Life Is Good, the memoir of Jules Paivio.

Jules Paivio was the last surviving member of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, whose volunteer members risked (and too often found) death on the battlefields of Spain in the late 1930s as they fought to defend the Spanish Republic from the forces of fascist general Francisco Franco, whose victory — supported by the German and Italian militaries — presaged the Second World War.

When he was in his 90s, Jules decided to write his memoirs, recounting a life lived joyfully despite harsh beginnings and many pains along the way. With editing by his niece and retired broadcaster, Benita Hart, Jules Paivio completed Life Is Good in 2010, only three years prior to his death at the age of 96.

With the support of The Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund, The BumblePuppy Press will release Life Is Good in the spring of 2024, a book which will include supplementary historical information and personal reflections from some of those who knew and loved him.

Life Is Good is not only a memoir of one man’s experience battling fascism during the Spanish Civil War, but also the story of a life lived well and with unshaken belief in the socialist values that led him, as a young man, to face death for a cause he knew was just.

Born just outside what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario, Jules was one of six children of Aku and Ida Päiviö (née Hänninen). His father Aku was a journalist, poet, and socialist who immigrated to the United States from Finland in 1902, and then to Canada in 1912.

Life Is Good is not only a memoir of war, but of peace, leavened with an indefatigable desire for justice, the memoir of a man whose political views and moral values remained constant throughout his long life.

The BumblePuppy Press is proud to be publishing this important work of Canadian history, and grateful to the Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund for financial support in bringing the book to publication.

For more information, please visit The BumblePuppy Press at www.bppress.ca/julespaivio.