His father was Hirsch Wolofsky, publisher of the Keneder Adler (Canadian Eagle), Canada's first Yiddish newspaper.
[1] Walsh ran for public office at least 30 times in his career, and was elected twice as a school trustee in Toronto in the late 1940s.
[3][1] When the Communist Party was banned in 1940, Walsh went underground and evaded arrest under the wartime Defence of Canada Regulations.
[2] Once the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the USSR became Canada's ally and Communists were able to organize the new Labor-Progressive Party as a legal front.
Walsh enlisted in the Canadian Army during World War II, becoming a second lieutenant instructing soldiers how to operate military vehicles.