Albert Harold "Harry" Rushton was born in Manchester in 1891, and immigrated to Canada in 1912. He worked as a travelling salesman and briefly as a vaudeville producer in Chicago from 1917-1918. He served as a Staff Sergeant with the Canadian Army during the First World War. He lived in Hamilton and Toronto, where he was active in the Communist Party of Canada from 1930 onward, and with the Ontario Federation of the Unemployed.
Rushton arrived in Spain in May 1937. He served with the Lincoln Battalion, then as a Political Commissar in the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion. He also served as the battalion historian and in the Armoury. He was wounded and hospitalized, but survived to return to Canada in August 1938.
After his time in Spain, he became a supporter of the SPCA in Niagara Falls, and had 14 dogs, several birds, and a monkey. He died in 1962.
