During the Great Depression of the 1930s almost 1/4 of the working population of Canada was unemployed. Because a family's meagre relief was cut when a child turned 16; young men left home to reduce the burden on their families. Thousands of unemployed rode the freight trains, mostly west, looking for work which didn't exist.

The Conservative government of R.B.Bennett set up work camps to prevent the growing unrest among this wandering mass of young unemployed workers. The relief camps were in remote areas of northern Ontario, or in the wilds of B.C.'s interiors.

The inmates called them "slave camps". In these camps men were issued war surplus clothing, given a bunk in a tar-paper shack, fed army rations and forced to work 6 1/2 days a week for 20 cents a day.