Henning Ingeman Sorensen

Henning Ingeman Sorensen, adventurer, translator (b at Copenhagen, Den 14 May 1901; d at Vancouver 3 Aug 1986). Sorensen abandoned a promising banking career in Copenhagen in 1922 to travel and work through Europe, Africa and N America, finally arriving at Montréal in 1929. In 1937, during the Spanish civil war, he went to Spain to report on medical conditions for the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, a Canadian organization supporting the Republicans, and there became the chief assistant and interpreter to Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who was providing mobile blood transfusions and emergency surgery to republican troops and soldiers of the International Brigades. During WWII he worked for Canadian naval intelligence, and subsequently for the international service of the CBC; and finally, during the early 1960s, he served as a translator in the Cuban foreign ministry.