Joe Wallace

Joe Wallace (born Joseph Sylvester Wallace, 29 October 1890 – 1 December 1975) was a Canadian poet, journalist, and communist activist. As a poet, he was briefly affiliated with The Song Fishermen, an informal group of poets from Atlantic Canada. Wallace enjoyed a limited reputation in Canadian literature, but he had a direct influence on better known poets with strong political views, such as Dorothy Livesay and Milton Acorn. From the 1950s until after his death, Wallace was almost certainly the best-known Canadian poet in Eastern Europe and China.

His brother got him a job working for the International Correspondence School in Newfoundland. After Wallace transferred to Halifax, he became the district manager. In 1916 he went to work for his brother in the Wallace Advertising Service and continued to work in this field successfully until 1933.

In 1915, he married Therese Dorothy (Dot) Granville. They had four children. In 1925, his five-year-old daughter died; in 1927, his wife died. In 1928, he married Grace Beardsley, but they soon separated. In the 1933 provincial election, he ran in Halifax Centre on the United Front ticket but received only 146 votes. One early poem, "The Voice of the Worker", is set to music and performed by folklorist Richard MacKinnon on the CD "Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest."

A short documentary film about Wallace, by filmmaker Sara Wylie (Wallace's great-great-niece) was released in 2022, under the title A More Radiant Sphere. Electoral record