Albert Franklyn Canwell (1907–2002) was an American journalist and politician who served as a member of the Washington State legislature from 1947 to 1949.

[1] Due to their physical distance from the facility Canwell was held out of the local one-room school until the age of 8, being taught to read and write at home under the tutelage of his mother.

[1] In the years after the war, the young Canwell took time off school to work as an itinerant fruit picker, earning money and traveling to see the states of the Pacific coast.

[1] He would continue traveling seasonally, working somewhat more lucratively as a fruit and produce packager until 1928 — a trade which included short stints riding freight trains and staying for a day or two in hobo camps.

[1] After 1928, Canwell left produce packing for good, taking a job as an employee of a large Spokane bookstore for two years before going to work for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Montana selling books door-to-door.

[1] Canwell felt that the turmoil was "created by professional radicals who were, in general, Communists and Communist-trained labor leaders.

"[1] Canwell emerged as a dedicated conservative Republican, viewing the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "a socialist venture and a repudiation of our free-enterprise, capitalist system.

[1] In addition to his written journalism, Canwell began developing as a photo-journalist, taking numerous photographs of prominent people.

[1] With the end of the war Canwell left the employ of the Sheriff's Office and took up life as a small scale cattle rancher.

He made two primary promises to the voters of his Spokane district during the 1946 campaign — to oppose new taxes and to take action against the spread of Communism in America.

Speaker of the House Herbert M. Hamblen — also hailing from the Eastern Washington city of Spokane — tapped Canwell as the chairman of this interim committee.

The committee was funded by the private donation of Fritz Jewitt, a wealthy lumberman and conservative political activist.

[1] Following his electoral defeat Canwell continued as a professional anti-communist, launching a business called the American Intelligence Service from a downtown Spokane office.

[3] In 1963 Canwell was the subject of a $225,000 libel suit when he intimated that Washington state representative John Goldmark and his wife were Communist agents.