In 1926 Havelock took his first academic job at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. He married Ellen Parkinson in 1927, and moved on to Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1929. Havelock's scholarly work during this period focused on Latin poetry, particularly Catullus, far from the early Greek philosophy he had worked on at Cambridge. While in Canada Havelock became increasingly involved in politics. With his fellow academics Frank Underhill and Eugene Forsey, Havelock was a cofounder of the League for Social Reconstruction, an organisation of politically active socialist intellectuals. He and Underhill were also the most outspoken of a group of dissident faculty members at the University.