1919-1945: DEPRESSION AND WAR

By Sean Mills, under the direction of Brian Young, McGill University

1840-1867: From Union to Confederation | 1867-1896: The New Canadian Reality | 1896-1919: From the Turn of the Century to the Great War | 1919-1945: Depression and War
 

Political

Economic

Ideological

World War Two

1919–1945

Political

William Lyon Mackenzie King

The labour radicalism of the postwar years continued into the early 1920s, before slowly losing its revolutionary momentum. With the 1921 election, a new era of Canadian politics was born. The Progressives, a protest party representing mostly farming interests, surprised everyone by finishing second in the election with 64 seats. It was, however, the Liberals' William Lyon Mackenzie King, a former civil servant with a strong background in labour relations, who came to occupy the country's top political position, a position that he would hold for the better part of the next three decades. The 1921 election was also a landmark in the history of Canadian women. Demonstrating the expanded role that women were to play in the political sphere, Agnes Macphail was elected as the first woman member of Parliament. Women, not legally recognized as people, however, were still barred from the Canadian Senate, and continued to occupy subordinate positions in nearly all levels of society. Rather than claiming total victory, therefore, the right to vote and to sit as members of Parliament was seen as a starting point for the feminist struggle that would continue throughout the century.

Despite King's best efforts, his government rapidly became unpopular, especially in the Maritimes and the West. When it came time to face the electorate again, in 1925, the Liberals were reduced to a minority government. King, realizing that he could not govern, asked the Governor General, Lord Byng, to dissolve the House. Byng refused and asked Arthur Meighen, the Conservative leader, to form a government. Before long, Meighen's Conservative government collapsed and in the election that followed, King, campaigning on "stability" and "democracy," easily returned to power. Governing during an economic boom is much easier than during a downturn. When the economy began to crash, and provincial governments began petitioning Ottawa for relief funds, King showed how far removed he was from the concerns of the electorate; reacting against provincial requests for relief funds, he stood up in the House of Commons and delivered a disastrous speech that his opponents would not soon forget. Proud of his balanced budged, King lashed out at the provincial demands and stated that, for "these alleged unemployment purposes," he "would not give them a five-cent piece." Less than four months later, on 28 July 1930, the population punished King's insensitivity and gave R. B. Bennett's Conservatives a 137 to 91 majority in the House.

R. B. Bennett and the Canadian New Deal

It did not take long, however, for the public's anger to shift from King to Bennett. As the Depression grew more severe, a starving population increasingly resented Bennett, with his image as a millionaire businessman. Defending laissez-faireeconomics, Bennett, for most of his term, ardently refused to expand the role of government. Both the population and Bennett's cabinet members were therefore shocked when, just months before the 1935 federal election, he announced a full-scale plan for economic and social reform. Taking the lead from the United States' Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bennett outlined the parameters of the "Canadian New Deal" to a radio-listening public. But his proposals for reform were too little, too late, and a sceptical population returned King's Liberals to government. Despite the Liberals' campaign slogan of "King or chaos," during the 1935 election, an unprecedented number of Canadians, distrustful of traditional political parties and insensitive politicians, cast their votes for neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives. As the fortune of Canadians declined, the popularity of protest parties increased.

Battles Over Constitutional Jurisdiction

Because the scale of misery caused by the Depression had no precedent, the various levels of government were locked in continual battles over constitutional jurisdiction and the funding of social programs. When King returned to power in 1935, he referred Bennett's New Deal legislation to the Supreme Court for a ruling on its constitutionality; the court, much to the dismay of Canadian social democrats who thought they had finally seen a sign of reform, ruled the most important parts of the legislationultra vires of the Canadian constitution. Constitutional jurisdiction also preoccupied politicians at the provincial level. In 1936, Maurice Duplessis and his Union Nationale[1] party ended 39 years of Liberal rule in Quebec. Disregarding the promises of reform that he had made during his election campaign, when in office, Duplessis courted the support of big business and the Catholic Church, cracked down on the union movement, and promised to "defend" Quebec against the intrusion of the federal government into its constitutionally defined jurisdictions. While Duplessis held the reigns of power in Quebec and ardently defended provincial jurisdictions, Mitchell Hepburn followed a similar policy in Ontario. Together, Hepburn and Duplessis sought to defend provincial jurisdictions and therefore ardently opposed King's plan for unemployment insurance.

Rowell-Sirois Commission

During the second half of the 1930s, with the question of constitutional jurisdiction constantly poisoning the political atmosphere and militating against decisive action to alleviate the effects of the Depression, King established the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, better known as the Rowell-Sirois Commission, to study the situation and submit recommendations. Referring the question to a committee allowed King, for the moment at least, to avoid taking firm action.

Economic

Aftermath of War

In the aftermath of the Great War, both the Union government and the Liberals who replaced them advocated a return to prewar liberal economic doctrines, giving primacy to "market forces" and resisting all forms of state intervention. In this environment, unemployed Canadians suffered and, lacking substantial public-support systems, were forced to rely on private charity and poorly administered local relief.

The Maritime Rights Movement

For eastern Canada, the end of the war brought with it an economic crisis of unprecedented severity. Amidst an economic downturn and a rising tide of labour radicalism, the region's production declined by 40 percent from 1917 to 1921. What is worse is that when the rest of Canada experienced a boom in the second half of the 1920s, the Maritime economy did not recover from its postwar slump, and over one hundred thousand people emigrated from the region in search of work in more economically prosperous areas. The outflow caused a decline in population relative to the rest of Canada, and consequently the number regional representatives in Ottawa was reduced (Conrad and Finkel 232).

To make matters worse, the federal government seemed to ignore the severity of the problems in the Maritimes. In the eyes of those living in the East, the federal government merely catered to the interests of central Canada and the West. During the war, for example, the merger of Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian National Railway meant job losses and the abandonment of Halifax and Saint John as major terminals of international trade. The Maritime Rights Movement, which united diverse groups, although led mostly by business and professional élites, demanded larger federal subsidies and, in addition, that the region's interests be taken into account by national transportation and tariff policies. The Maritime Rights Movement played a significant role in electoral politics in the 1920s, eventually forcing the creation of the Royal Commission on Maritime Claims (1926), before finally dying out in the late 1920s. Most of the recommendations of the commission were, however, ignored by the King government (Conrad and Finkel 232-233).

The Boom of the 1920s

The economic downturns of the early twenties, however, slowly gave way to economic growth and expansion in the second half of the decade. Fuelled by a strong American economy, new manufacturing industries were established in Ontario. Quebec, too, experienced growth in manufacturing, along with an expansion of industries based on the extraction of natural resources. With Canadian and American capital and technological expertise, mining, forestry, and hydro-electricity all became centrally important to the economies of Ontario and Quebec. As industry expanded, cities grew; Toronto's population rose by 32 percent during the period, and Montreal's underwent a 38 percent increase (Brown 426).

The Crash of 1929

The economic prosperity that can generally be said to have characterized the period from 1896 on came to a devastating end in 1929; the crash of the American stock exchange was only the most visible symptom of larger economic problems. Before long, Canada, like most of the western world, quickly descended into the depths of depression. As countries scrambled to alleviate the effects of the collapse, they resorted to isolationist policies that they believed would protect their native industries. For Canada, a country which relied on agricultural exports (80 percent of Canada's agricultural goods were exported, and the 1928 harvest had already created a glut in the market), the effects of the collapse were disastrous.

Depression in the West, the Centre, and the East

Just when it seemed that things could not get any worse, the already hard-hit Prairies suffered one of the worst droughts and grasshopper invasions in living memory; innumerable crops and livelihoods were destroyed. Canada's manufacturing centres were also severely affected, and production fell by a third between 1929 and 1932 (Thompson 196). Canada's unemployment rate rose dramatically from 13 percent in 1930 to 26 percent in 1933, and net income fell from $417 million to $109 million in the same period (Cook 444, Morton 107). No region's desperation, however, could compare with Newfoundland's (the colony was still not part of Canada). The collapse of export markets for natural resources proved disastrous for Newfoundland, as 98 percent of its exports were concentrated in fish, forestry and minerals. Facing a crushing debt and rising social unrest, the Newfoundland House of Assembly, in an act of desperation, suspended democracy and handed over power to a British-appointed commission that would rule the province throughout the tumultuous decade.

Diverse Experiences during the Depression

As the economy collapsed and the unemployment rate rose, prices fell. For workers who managed to keep their jobs, the falling cost of living easily offset any decrease in wages. Civil servants of the Dominion government even experienced a 25 percent increase in their standard of living between 1926 and 1933 (Bliss vi). But for the unemployed, in an age where poverty was believed to be the result of poor morals and a lack of individual initiative, little or no support structure was in place to soften the blows of the Depression. For the entire decade, federal, provincial, and municipal governments bickered over who would bear the costs of relief. And when relief was issued, it was accompanied by strict residency requirements and forced labour. Society's leaders insisted that jobs existed for those who wanted them, and the stigma was severe for those relying on relief. While unemployed women often resorted to demeaning work as domestic servants, single unemployed men lurked in the streets and represented, to the government, a grave social danger.

Relief Camps

To deal with the problem, both federal and provincial relief camps were established where, under military discipline (the federal relief camps were even administered by the Department of National Defence), single men were forced to work for roughly 20 cents a day.

Anger and Frustration

Many Canadians, on the verge of starvation, felt compelled to write to Prime Minister Bennett and explain their misery. Charles Grierson, in his letter to Bennett (Bliss 47), clearly outlines the desperation that many Canadians felt.

Dear Sir: —

Sometime ago I write a letter to you appealing for help or employment. It is now forty months since I had the pleasure of a pay check. My family, are all undernourished, ill clothed and ill sheltered and are in need of Medical Assistance. How long do you think we can carry on under these circumstances? You stated that there would be no one starve in Canada I presume you meant not starve over night but slowly our family amongst thousands of others fare doing the same slowly and slowly… For God's sake please make a personal endeavour to assist me toward a brighter outlook immediately.

Yours Very Sincerely,

Charles Grierson.

Some of Bennett's correspondents even lashed out in anger against the prime minister who, they believed, was not doing enough to help their dire situation. The collective anger is clearly summed up by one anonymous worker's letter,

Well Mr. R.B. Bennett, arnt you a man or are you? to be the cause of all this starvation and privation. You call us derelicts, then if we are derelicts what else are you but one too. only a darn sight worse. You said if you was elected, you would give us all work and wages, well you have been in the Prime Ministers shoes, now, for 4 years. and we are still looking for work and wages. You took all our jobs away from us. We can't earn any money. You say a relief camp is good enough for us, but its too good for you Mr. Bennett, you are on relief your own self. You put away your big govt salary, then ask the gov't to pay for your bigfeasts, while we poor fellows starve. (Bliss 95)

Acute poverty and lack of meaningful employment were bound to cause many to question and, in many cases, seek to replace society's economic and political structures. The 1930s therefore witnessed an unprecedented widening of the political spectrum and a great efflorescence of political ideology.

Ideological

New Political Groups

The severity of the economic crash of the 1930s had a profound effect on the Canadian population. Across the spectrum, new political groups were forming, announcing their displeasure with the government and advocating change. Distrustful of society's leaders, both youth and women articulated a lack of confidence in the economic and political élites that governed society, pushed their way onto the political scene, and developed autonomous political organizations. Joining more traditional male-dominated groups, youth and women questioned the classical liberal paradigm.

Challenges to Classical Liberalism

Until the 1930s, classical liberalism, stressing the primacy of market forces and individual property rights, dominated political and economic thinking. In the minds of a struggling population with an unprecedented number of unemployed workers, classical liberalism proved unable to respond to the needs of the population. Individuals, kept informed of European developments by their daily newspapers, began looking for alternatives.

The Far Left

On both ends of the political spectrum, radical groups emerged and received a larger hearing than they had in the past. On the far left, the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) preached that a full-scale revolution was the only solution to the economic crisis. Founded in 1921 in a barn outside Guelph, Ontario, the CPC worked to organize workers in trade unions and, among many immigrant workers, had a large degree of success. The severity of the Depression caused the CPC's ranks to swell, and the party began to gain ground among Canadian workers. The CPC, because of the danger that it represented to the established order, was subjected to brutal police repression; in 1931 many CPC members, including the party's leader Tim Buck, were arrested and sentenced to five years in the Kingston Penitentiary. Despite King's legalization of the CPC in 1936, the repression did not end. During the Duplessis régime in Quebec, for example, basic civil liberties were disregarded and political dissent not allowed. When three delegates of the new Spanish republic visited Montreal in 1936, Quebec's clerical élite, provoked by fear, demanded that the government take action against the Communists. Duplessis was only too happy to respond and, in March 1937, he passed the Padlock Act, providing for the forced padlocking of any building deemed to have been used for "communistic" purposes. Defenders of civil liberties demanded, to no avail, that the federal government disallow the act.

The Far Right

With the Communists occupying the far left, political groups also emerged on the other end of the political spectrum. During the 1930s, fascist parties gained the support of, among others, many German and Italian immigrants. Anti-Semitic, anticommunist, and antihomosexual, fascists attempted to preserve social harmony and looked approvingly to the restored "pride" of both Germany and Italy. Fascism gained a significant foothold in Canada's major cities; Montreal, where fascists presented themselves as the defenders of Catholicism and the French-Canadian race, was a main centre of activity.

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation

In addition to communist and fascist organizations, many other groups and parties surfaced that were, while perhaps no less radical, less extreme. The newly formed League for Social Reconstruction, for example, began the decade by demanding radical changes to the economic system. Far more influential was the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), formed in 1932. Bringing together many diverse political groups, the CCF clearly stated its political intentions in the last line of its manifesto: "No C.C.F. Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full program of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Co-operative Commonwealth." Gaining strength at both the federal and provincial levels, the CCF succeeded in permanently disrupting the two-party system and seriously threatening the power structure.

The Emergence of "New Liberalism"

While the efflorescence of political movements did not result in radical change, the scale of the Depression clearly demonstrated that unemployment did not result merely from a lack of individual initiative, and that larger economic structures could not be left unchecked by the government. Beginning in the mid-1930s, therefore, many individuals began advocating a new liberalism, based on universal social programs, state intervention in the economy, and a rhetoric of equality of opportunity. This new liberalism, reflected in part in Bennett's failed New Deal legislation, was most strongly advocated by a group of young economists who found their way into the federal government and who started laying the foundations for the welfare state that would emerge in the postwar era. As federal-provincial roles were being redefined and as the government was slowly moving towards reform, however, the outbreak of war in Europe cast these questions aside, and Canada began its preparations for another European conflict.

World War Two

As Arthur Lower aptly remarked in May 1939, each day, "with its news of fresh German aggressions, seems to make it more apparent that the old world order, in which Canadians have hitherto lived so comfortably, is passing away." After years of building tensions and fears, Canada declared war on Germany on 10 September 1939, seven days after Great Britain did so. With the passing of the War Measures Act, the federal government assumed most of the responsibilities outlined in the Rowell-Sirois Royal Commission, and the stalemate that existed between the Hepburn-Duplessis alliance and King faded before more immediate concerns.

Adélard Godbout

When Duplessis announced an election for October 1939, he positioned himself as the true defender of Quebec and reminded voters of the betrayal of conscription during World War One. But Liberal leaders promised that there would be no conscription, Quebec voters put their confidence in them, and the Liberal Adélard Godbout became Quebec's provincial leader. Among other reformist acts, Godbout finally granted the provincial vote to Quebec women.

The Canadian War Effort and Conscription

King, hoping to avoid committing Canadian ground troops to overseas combat, pledged to develop a training program for Allied pilots. If Canada's war effort consisted of providing and training pilots, King thought, perhaps he could avoid the national cleavages that emerged during World War One. It did not take long, however, for the European situation to deteriorate. After the "phony war" period, western Europe quickly fell to Hitler's advancing army, and Britain was struggling for its very survival. By 1942 the situation looked bleak for the Allies, and Canada entered a "total war" period. If Canada was to supply enough soldiers to fight in Europe, it would have to resort, once again, to conscription. King, remembering his promise to Quebec that he would not implement conscription, decided to resolve the issue by sending the question to a national plebiscite. In the vote that ensued, 64 percent of Canadians voted in favour of conscription; in Quebec, only 28 percent approved. Although conscription did not have a significant impact on Canada's war effort, Canada was once again internally divided and the memory of conscription would have consequences long after the end of the war.

Women and the War

The war also had a significant impact on Canadian women. Although combat positions were only open to men, over 43,000 women joined the Canadian army as nurses, secretaries, machine operators, and in other non-combat positions. With large numbers of men absent, moreover, many women joined the workforce for the first time, and centres were opened to care for children during the day. When the war ended, however, the daycare centres were closed and women were expected, by both the government and their husbands, to return to the home.

The End of War and the Emergence of a New Canada

As the war slowly came to a close, it became clear that Canada would no longer resemble its prewar self. In the 1940s the CCF's popularity was rapidly rising at both the federal and provincial levels; in 1944 the CCF's Tommy Douglas formed Canada's first social-democratic government in Saskatchewan. Partly hoping to prevent a CCF takeover, and partly influenced by a Keynesian desire to maintain purchasing power and ensure that Canada would not once again fall into economic misery, the federal Liberals began actively constructing a centralized welfare state based in Ottawa. The creation of a federal unemployment insurance program in 1940 and family allowance[2] in 1944 marked the beginnings of sustained federal expansion. In the postwar period, plans for weddings and families that had been postponed due to the war were carried out, a desire to return to normal permeated society, and new social programs offered a sense of security. Their combined effects fuelled a massive and unprecedented increase in the birth rate that lasted through to the 1960s. For the next decade and a half, therefore, the baby boom, the expansion of the state, and the dawning of a new consumer culture were the legacy of the 1919-1945 period, laying the foundations of modern Canadian society.

Suggestions for Further Reading

For good surveys of the period, see John Thompson and Alan Seager, Canada, 1922-1939: Decades of Discord (Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 1985); Ian Drummond, Robert Bothwell, and John English, Canada, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987); for a specific look at Quebec, see Paul-André Linteau, René Durocher, Jean-Claude Robert, and François Ricard, Histoire du Québec contemporain: Le Québec depuis 1930, rev. ed. (Montreal: Boréal compact, 1989); for a look at how the Depression affected ideologies in Quebec, seeIdéologies au Canada français, 1930-1939, edited by Fernand Dumont, Jean Hamelin, and Jean-Paul Montminy (Quebec City: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1978).

For a look at a history of political protest in the Maritimes, see Ernest R. Forbes, Maritime Rights: The Maritime Rights Movement, 1919-1927 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1979); E. R. Forbes and D. A. Muise, eds., The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); also see Gary Burrill and Ian McKay, eds.,People, Resources and Power: Critical Perspectives on Underdevelopment and Primary Industries in the Atlantic Region(Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1987). For a look at the labour uprising in the Maritimes, see Ian McKay and Suzanne Morton, "The Maritimes: Expanding the Circle of Resistance," in The Workers' Revolt in Canada, 1917-1925, edited by Craig Heron (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). For an excellent article discussing problems particular to the writing of Atlantic Canadian history, see Ian McKay, "A Note on ‘Region' in Writing the History of Atlantic Canada," Acadiensis 29, no. 2 (Spring 2000).

For social history of the Depression, see Blair Neatby, The Politics of Chaos: Canada in the Thirties (Toronto: Macmillan, 1972). Michael Bliss has edited a heart-wrenching collection of letters written to Bennett during the Depression in The Wretched of Canada: Letters to R. B. Bennett, 1930-1935(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971). For a look at Quebec, see The Bitter Thirties in Quebec (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1975). Surprisingly little work has been done on the social conditions in Quebec during the Depression. For an excellent exception to this rule, see Denyse Baillargeon, Making Do: Women, Family and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression(Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999).

Two good books on the Communist Party of Canada are Ian Angus,Canadian Bolsheviks (Montreal: Vanguard, 1981) and Ivan Avakumovic, The Communist Party in Canada: A History(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975). A vast library of titles exists for the CCF, but the principle works are Walter Young,Anatomy of a Party: The National CCF, 1932-1961 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), and Norman Penner, From Protest to Power: Social Democracy in Canada 1900-Present(Toronto: Lorimer, 1992). Joan Sangster provides a very good examination of the role of women on the left in Dreams of Equality: Women on the Canadian Left, 1920-1950 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989). For a treatment of Quebec, see Andrée Lévesque, Virage à gauche interdit: les communistes, les socialistes, et leurs ennemis au Québec, 1929-1939(Montreal: Boréal Express, 1984). For a look at the League for Social Reconstruction, see Michiel Horn, The League for Social Reconstruction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). The other end of the political spectrum is discussed by Lita-Rose Betcherman in The Swastika and the Maple Leaf (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1975).

For works on the changing nature of liberalism and the role of intellectuals in the public service, see Doug Owram, The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986); Barry Ferguson, Remaking Liberalism: The Intellectual Legacy of Adam Shortt, O. D. Skelton, W. C. Clark, and W. A. Mackintosh, 1890-1925 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993). For information onhow the emergence of the welfare state affected women, see Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).

There are many works on World War Two, chief among them J. L. Granatstein and Desmond Morton, A Nation Forged in Fire: Canadians and the Second World War (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1989). The major work dealing with conscription is J. L. Granatstein and J. M. Hitsman, Broken Promises: A History of Conscription in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1979). For an examination of Japanese internment during World War Two, see Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians During the Second World War(Toronto: Lorimer, 1981). For a look at domestic issues during the war, see J. L. Granatstein, Canada's War: The Politics of the Mackenzie King Government, 1939-1945 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1975). An excellent book on Canadian women and the war is Ruth Roach Pierson, "They're Still Women After All": The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986).

[1] TheUnion Nationale government was formed when Quebec's small provincial Conservative party under Duplessis merged with a group of disaffected Liberals. Once the election was won, however, Duplessis succeeded in gaining full control of the direction of the party.

[2]Under the terms of the initial legislation, mothers of children under the age of sixteen received between $5 to $8 per child.