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Depression — Crise des années 1930

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Multiple Perspectives - perspectives multiple


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1930 VOTEZ LIBÉRAL - Ne laissons pas rouiller les mailles de la chaine qu'a soudée le forgeron. LAC, Acc. No. 1996-76-13, Jimmy Frise 1930
















1930? The Rt. Hon. R.B. Bennett, and his sister. LAC, C-21528

"Elect me to power and I will blast a way into the world's markets; elect me to power and I will end unemployment in 30 days."
                                                                                               R. B. Bennett



















Single men's unemployed association parading in Toronto, 1930s, LAC C-29397




Montreal people eating at soup kitchen, LAC PA-168131













1926-1934 Keep Trade in the Family :  keep trade in the family. Empire Marketing Board, LAC, Acc. No. 1983-27-272, Austin Cooper 1926-1934




Powerhouse Museum from Sydney, Australia, 1930-1939




William Gropper, New Masses, New York, December 1930
















"I would not like to live here [U.S.S.R.]. There are no smiling people, no gaiety, no whistling in the streets. If the people have any liberty, there is no sign of it apparent."
                                                                                                  Agnes Macphail
































Rev. Andrew Roddan standing in front of men lined up for food outside the First United Church, September 1931, City of Vancouver Archives AM54-54-S4--Re N5.2




Three men in shelter in the 'jungle' at the City dump, September 1931, City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-54-S4--Re N3.2



"Getting a job was the greatest achievement bar none in the days of my youth. I know because I knocked on doors and answered ads and filled in forms for two years, only to be told there was nothing, nothing, nothing, although that wasn't always the reply. 'Leave you name and we'll let you know' –– and like a goof, you became hopeful although you knew there was no hope, there as nothing. A job meant everything in the thirties: it was an escape from the dreariness of the depression, and a chance to live it up after all the aching dullness of nothing to do, nowhere to go. Cyril Lee's description of life in a relief camp –– an indefinite prison sentence–– was a good description of unemployment; even outside the camp, life was like a prison sentence."
                                    Peter Stursberg, Those Were the Days Victoria in the 1930s
















"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."
Depression saying



“Estevan”
(words by Cecil Boone)
(Sung to the tune of ‘Kevin Barry’)

In a little mining village
Scarcely noticed on the map
Bourgeois guns were turned on workers
And their life’s blood there did sap.

No one dreamed of such a slaughter
In that town of Estevan.
That armed thugs with guns and bullets
Would shoot men with empty hands.

Just a protest from the miners.
And boss bullets then did fly,
Caring not who was the target
Or the number that would die

Blazing forth nine hundred bullets
Bodies full of lead did fill,
Murdered three, and wounded twenty-
But the Cause they could not kill.

Three more martyrs for the miners,
Three more murders for the boss
Brutal laws, to crush the workers
Who dare fight in Freedom’s cause.

As those miners lay a-dying
In their agony and pain
Whispered, “Though we die for freedom,
Yet we do not die in vain.”

“For we know our class will triumph
Whey they shall united stand;
They will tkde the world for labor
And the workers rule the land.

Then the workers’ day of vengeance
Will be proclaimed with each breath;
Labor’s cause is right and mighty
And beyond the reach of death.”

(from Canadian Miner, Calgary, 30 January 1932)



















































Toronto Reference Library, 1932













































City of Vancouver Archives



















"We aim to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine, democratic self government, based on economic equality will be possible."
                                                                     CCF preamble, Regina Manifesto, 1933

 

"We do not believe in change by violence. We consider that both the old parties in Canada are the instruments of capitalist interests . . . who finance them."
                                                                                  The Regina Manifesto, 1933




Interior of main sleeping hut, Relief Project No. 27, Dept. of National Defence,
LAC C-031058








































Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King driving a wagon ("Bennett Buggy"). LAC C-087860, 27 July 1933
















































A family fleeing poverty and starvation in the Peace River, 1934 Glenbow Archives
McDermid Collection ND-3-6742




Empire Marketing Board, Buy Empire Every Day, 1926-34 LAC Acc. No.




Written by Maurice Sugar, Workers Songbook, 1934
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWm4kMwkBPc




William Gropper, New Masses, New York, January 1934




























































"You don't have to know all about Social Credit before you vote for it, you don't have to understand electricity to use it . . . all you have to do is push the button and you get the light."
                                                                                      William Aberhart, 1934

 

"There are 731,000 in Alberta and it's our duty to look after them. It's funny in this province of ours there is a law that prevents you starving or ill-treating a dog, cow, or any other animal, and yet they allow people to go hungry, ill-clothed and suffer. Social Credit with its basic dividend to every man and woman of $25.00 per month starts out with the corrective measure at once. It places purchasing power in the hands of consumers."
                                                                                         William Aberhart, 1935



"Socialism and Social Credit. Two great reform movements. Born in the depression. One turned to the left, and one to the right, that’s all. That’s the only difference. They're both populist movements."
                                                       W. A. C. Bennett, The Sun, 5 September 1976




Relief camp workers clearing rocks, Canada. Dept. of National Defense/LAC/PA-036328.
To see more relief camp projects click on this image.



 
Saskatchewan Archives Board R-A1994















"There can be no permanent recovery without reform. And, to my mind, reform means Government intervention. It means Government control and regulation. It means the end of laissez fair."
                                                                                     Richard Bedford Bennett
































Mayor Gerry McGeer read the riot act on 23 April 1935







Communist Party members at a May Day march. 1935?, Vancouver Public Library 8787

































LAC-C029399




Regina riot - R.B. Bennett's noisy collision with the Department. Royal Canadian Mounted Police, LAC  e004666101, June/July 1935








































"The men of the railway unions co-operated with the jobless trekkers on the long and dangerous freight journey across Canada. When the jobless army pulled into the town or city to rest for the night, citizens and civic authorities met them with a friendly welcome¬¬––and with food. Anticipating their arrival, the working women in Canada's cities and towns baked and cooked piles of food which they had solicited from the store keepers. To all except the politically bankrupt, ruthless leaders of big business and their "iron heel" government, these jobless workers were 'our boys,' and they were treated as such."
                                                                                                Tom McEwen,
              He Wrote For Us The Story of Bill Bennett, pioneer socialist journalist, 1951












Regina riot. Royal Canadian Mounted Police, LAC e004666103, July 1935










"The strike is evidence that herding jobless citizens into isolated camps, putting them under something like military rule and discipline and paying them 20 cents a day for doing occasional jobs is a first class method of making converts for the Communist party."
                                                      John W. Dafoe, Winnipeg Free Press, 3 July 1935

 

"Dominion Day, 1935, our country's birthday, and what a birthday celebration it turned out to be . . . There were probably four or five hundred of us on Market Square [Regina] . . . The meeting  wasn't long under way  . . .  when four large furniture vans backed up, one to each corner of the Market Square . . . and out poured the Mounties, each armed with a baseball bat . . .  In less than ten minutes Market Square was a mass of writhing, groaning forms, like a battlefield."
                                                                                                Ronald Liversedge

 

"You [R. B. Bennett] referred to us as not wanting work. Give any of us work and see whether we will work. This is an insidious attempt to propagandize the press on your part, and anybody who professes to be premier and uses such despicable tactics is not fit to be premier of a Hottentot village."
                    Arthur R. (Slim) Evans, Communist leader of the On-to-Ottawa Trek, 1935




















































Group of men, possibly members of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, sharing the same bed during the Depression. Groupe d'hommes, possiblement de membres du battalion Mackenzie-Papineau, partageant le meme lit pendant la Dépression. LAC C-013236, 1936




1936 Poster of the Dionne Quintuplets Reunion. LAC, R1300-1397 20th Century Fox 1936
























































































Relief demonstration. Manifestation de la relève. LAC C-079022, Vancouver, 1937




































Nation's Business, Washington, D.C. April 1938





















A "tin-canner" on a Victoria street., 1938, BC Archives A-01657




Post Office sit down strike, 1938, Vancouver Public Library Accession No. 1285




Helena Gutteridge speaking to a crowd of people during the Post Office and Art Gallery sit in. 1938, Vancouver Public Library  13333




Group of men taking a vote at the Georgia Hotel during Post Office and Art Gallery sit in. 1938, Vancouver Public Library 13337




Men sleeping inside the Post Office during the Post Office and Art Gallery sit in, 1938, Vancouver Public Library Accession No. 13338




Post Office sit-in [police removing man from building], 1938, City of Vancouver Archives AM1576-S6-12-F47-- 2011 -010.1695




























Automobile Show in the Automotive Building at the Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, Ont. LAC, PA-052897, Canadian National Exhibition, Pringle and Booth 1939


 




















Bachelor, Workers Age, NY, 16 December 1939