Edward Cecil-Smith (d.1964) was born in China, where his British parents were Anglican missionaries with the China Inland Mission in Guiyang. He immigrated to Canada in the late 1920s and worked as a newspaper reporter; in 1933 he was a reporter and editor of The Worker. In 1937, he commanded the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of Canadian volunteers in the International Brigades of the republican army in the Spanish Civil War. After the war he left the Communist Party, and worked as an editor for Wallace Publications, a publisher of trade magazines.