Alexander Albert MacLeod (April 2, 1902 – March 13, 1970) was a political organizer and a prominent member of the Communist Party of Canada and, later, of its legal group, the Labor-Progressive Party. He was an elected Member of the Provincial Parliament of Ontario from 1943 to 1951.
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Early life
MacLeod was born in 1902 in Black Rock, Nova Scotia. After the opening of the steel plant at Sydney Mines, the family relocated and his father was employed there as a steelworker. MacLeod was educated in local public schools and also worked at the steel plant as a young man. He enlisted in the Canadian Army in his early teens; some accounts state that MacLeod was the youngest soldier to enlist in the Canadian Army during World War I. He went overseas with the 185th Battalion of the Cape Breton Highlanders and returned to Canada shortly before the end of the war. After working at the steel plant again and completing further education, MacLeod was employed by YMCA, first in North Sydney and Halifax in Nova Scotia and then as an executive member in Chicago.