Relief Camps

Economic Background

From 1929-39 Canada suffered the longest and deepest economic depression in its history. The economic crisis was ushered in by the Wall Street stock market crash of Oct.24 1929. Hundreds of companies - large and small - went bankrupt and closed their doors. Thousands of people who speculated in the stock market, or invested their savings in stocks and bonds, were ruined overnight. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs. Panic gripped the land.

Canadian Pacific Railway stocks, for example, which stood at $64.75 in 1929, dived to $8.50 in 1931. International Nickel plummeted from $72.50 to $4.50 in the same period.

Production also declined drastically.

By 1929 the gross value of all goods and services produced in Canada had risen to $6.3 billion. By 1933 it had been cut by almost half to $3.3 billion.

The gross value of manufacturing was $4,100 million in 1929; by 1933 it had decreased to $2,000 million.

Agricultural production dropped from $1,900 million in 1928 to $819 million in 1932.

Construction fared worst of all, sliding from $594 million in 1929 to $97 million in 1933.

In all cases these pre-war levels were not exceeded until well into the war years of 1939-45. It took another world war to end the economic depression.

Official figures placed unemployment at 26.5 percent. Labour economists placed it at 40 percent.

Once busy industrial sites were as quiet as graveyards.

For those still working wage cuts of 10 and 15 percent a year were common. Coal mines worked one day a week.

At first there was no welfare for those who lost their jobs, but when the unemployed began to organize and demonstrate they won a small measure of welfare or "relief" as it was called in those days.

People who had mortgages and no jobs simply lost their homes.

Farmers were equally hard hit. Wheat was selling at 25 cents a bushel. Farmers had their farms and goods seized and sold at auctions. In September,1937, over 90 percent of the people of the province of Saskatchewan were on relief.

Medical services for the poor were almost non-existent.

Thousands of immigrants who lost their jobs were deported.

It was a soul searing, never to be forgotten experience for most Canadians. Words cannot describe the humiliation of asking for welfare; the feeling of hopelessness and rejection by continuous "no help wanted" signs; the heartache of being unable to properly feed and clothe the family and the consequent sense of failure as a human being; the bitterness of seeing some enjoy steady work, good food and clothes and good times while all this was denied to so many without jobs.

Among those hardest hit were the youth.

Many unemployed young men were sent to work on farms for $5.00 a month.

Not wishing to be a burden on their parents, who often were also unemployed, thousands of young men left home and travelled by freight train from coast to coast in a vain search for work. But there were no jobs. The future seemed hopeless.

more ....."Hungry Thirties"