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Gedion Menard, Earl Bell Rose, and Thomas Sims were among hundreds of Canadians who wrote to the Department of External Affairs asking for permission to go to Spain. All three emphasized that they were not going as combatants. The department rejected Sims’ application on August 5, 1937 due to specific restrictions on passports for travel to Spain.  

Sims was an Irish immigrant and miner living in New Westminster, British Columbia. He was around 34 when he sent the application and had been a member of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) since 1936. This political affiliation may have led to his rejection because one of the government’s restrictions was that travelers to Spain could not intervene on behalf of either side of the conflict. Being a Communist may have also been the reason for his application in the first place because the CPC was the major recruiter of Canadian volunteers to aid the Spanish Republic. This application, and its rejection, demonstrates not only one man's desire to go to Spain, but also speaks to the larger story of the recruitment of Canadians for the Spanish Civil War and the government's desire to stop it. 

The official Canadian stance when the conflict broke out was neutrality. The Canadian public, however, was very interested in the war. This interest often differed across language lines. English Canadians primarily supported the Republican cause while French Canadians supported General Franco, largely due to his fight against communism. Within English Canada, the largest support came from the Left. Both the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) and the CPC supported the Republicans, but only the CPC recruited volunteers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which was already monitoring CPC activities, immediately began observing this recruitment.   

The government saw these volunteers as threatening Canadian neutrality and the unity between English and French Canadians. Existing British law barred “illegal enlistment” in foreign wars, but as of 1931 Canada had full control of laws affecting its foreign affairs, so many politicians thought that Canada should develop a law of its own. The Canadian Foreign Enlistment Act (CFEA) was passed on April 10, 1937 and was fully instituted on July 30, 1937. It was on these grounds that Sims’s application was rejected.  

The CFEA did not ultimately stop recruitment as the CPC developed a system to send volunteers to Spain without government permission. Sims managed to make his way to Spain that September and eventually survived the conflict. Despite some arrests and recruiters being prosecuted, no charges were made under the CFEA. By the time prosecutions had begun, the Republicans were losing, recruitment had stopped, and many in the government did not want to elicit public sympathy for the Communists. The participation of Canadians in foreign wars is still relevant today, with it recently being discussed regarding Canadians volunteering in the conflict in Ukraine in 2022.