William Krehm

William Krehm (November 23, 1913 – April 19, 2019), also known as Wolfe Krehm, was a Canadian author, journalist, political activist and real estate developer. A prominent figure in the early Canadian Trotskyist movement, he travelled to Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where he worked with the anti-Stalinist Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) as a propagandist, translator and journalist. Following the suppression of the POUM in 1937, he was imprisoned for three months and subsequently expelled from Spain.

Krehm later spent eight years in Latin America, where he worked as a journalist and became a correspondent for Time. He returned to Canada in 1948, worked as a music critic for The Globe and Mail and CBC Radio, and subsequently became a home builder and real estate developer. In 1963, he and his brother-in-law Ben Cowan founded what became O'Shanter Development Co.

After retiring from the real estate business, Krehm devoted much of his later life to economic and monetary issues. He co-founded the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER) in the 1980s and remained one of its principal figures. In his late 90s and early 100s, he was a plaintiff in COMER's unsuccessful legal challenge concerning the role of the Bank of Canada. He died in Toronto in 2019 at the age of 105.

Early life Krehm was born in Toronto to Hyman and Sarah Krehm, Jews who had left the Russian Empire separately between 1905 and 1910, before meeting and marrying in Toronto's St. John's Ward, known as The Ward, a working class district that was home to successive waves of immigrants. The site was commemorated by Heritage Toronto with a plaque in 2021 recognizing the Krehm family and the achievements of William and his sister Ida. William Krehm moved to New York City where he worked selling hats. After the 1929 Stock Market Crash, he became interested in Marxism. He graduated from high school in 1930 and studied mathematics at the University of Toronto for two years before dropping out for lack of funds. In 1934, Krehm and his followers, along with B. J. Field and his followers in the United States, left the CLA to form the Organizing Committee for a Revolutionary Workers Party (later known as the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party, and colloquially as the "Fieldites"), and affiliated with the international organization known as the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Parties or London Bureau. Krehm became leader of the Canadian group and editor of its newspaper Workers' Voice. Krehm went to Europe as the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party's delegate to a conference of the International Revolutionary Marxist Centre being held in Brussels in October. He visited Barcelona for five days in September before returning to Belgium, and went back to Spain the following month, after the conference, However, he decided to return to Spain on his own and joined the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) as a propagandist, translator and journalist, and as such would occasionally visit the front lines,

He met fellow POUM member Eric Arthur Blair, (better known by his pen name, George Orwell), and used to chat with him in the cafes of Barcelona. In response, a solidarity rally was organized in the United States which organizers estimated to have attracted 4,000 protesters.

Foreign correspondent in Latin America Finding that the Trotskyist movement had dwindling support, and increasingly disillusioned by revolutionary politics following his experiences in Spain, Krehm moved to Mexico, arriving with only $270 in his pocket,

As the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, Krehm found that his radical past imperiled his employability. His home was frequently visited by the RCMP Security Service and his appearances on CBC came to an end. Benefiting from the post-war property development boom in the Toronto suburbs during the post-war housing boom, Krehm became wealthy and O'Shanter became one of Toronto's biggest landlords. In the 1970s and 80s, he campaigned against rent control after it was introduced by the provincial government.

COMER Krehm retired in the 1980s and devoted his time to studying and writing on economics, co-founding the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform later in the 1980s. The case was dismissed by the Federal Court of Appeal in 2016. In May 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada denied the plaintiffs' request for leave to appeal.

Later life Krehm continued playing violin into his 90s. He died, aged 105, in Toronto in 2019.

Works by William Krehm SPAIN: Revolution and Counter-Revolution (1937?) Democracia y tiranias en el Caribe (1947) Growing Pains for Latin America (1948) Price in a mixed economy: Our record of disaster (1975) Babel's tower: The dynamics of economic breakdown (1977) How to Make Money in a Mismanaged Economy and Other Essays (1980) Democracies and tyrannies of the Caribbean (1984, originally published in Spanish in 1947) A power unto itself : the Bank of Canada : the threat to our nation's economy (1993)