Between 1936 and 1939, over forty thousand volunteers from around the world fought to save Spain's constitutionally elected government. Los Canadienses is about the 1 200 Canadians in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion who joined that struggle. More than half of them never returned. Emotional, the film never lapses into sentimentality. Respectful, it is committed to the memory of those who truly believed in the cause of the Republic.