Impacts of the Great Depression

HUMA 1200 - Contents of Canadian Culture
ESSAY:
The maximum permissible length is 2500 words (please include a word count). Extensions will be granted in exceptional circumstances only and must be requested from your T.A. before the due date. Must be formatted Chicago Style.
Sources:
Students will note that certain books have been cited under each essay topic. As these are among the best sources for each topic, students should use them (if available) in their research, in addition to other scholarly books and articles. Generally speaking, the books listed constitute the minimum number of sources students should consult. Most are available on SHORT-TERM LOAN in the library system and many are available as e-books from the library’s online catalogue.
Note: internet-based “secondary” sources are fine, as long as they are written by scholars and documented with footnotes or endnotes; internet-based “primary” sources--i.e. written by participants/ observers of the historical event in question--are also acceptable. However, general survey texts, such as R. Bothwell's A Penguin History of Canada or D. Morton's Short History of Canada, as well as The Canadian Encyclopaedia and The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, are NOT acceptable as bibliographic items and should only be used, if at all, to introduce students to their chosen topic. Nor should the lectures be considered a source.
Please note: all sources used in the essay must be cited in footnotes or endnotes and listed in a bibliography.
For additional secondary sources students should consult the York University On-line Library Catalogue, at http://www(dot)library(dot)yorku(dot)ca/. From here students can easily search for books--by keyword etc.--and also for scholarly articles, by searching the Electronic Indexes or Databases, like “America, History and Life.”
Essay Topic
4. Discuss the impact of the Depression of the following group: prairie farmers
James Gray, The Winter Years and Men Against the Desert.
N. Sutherland, Growing Up
P. Axelrod, Making a Middle Class: Student Life in English Canada During the Thirties
J. Struthers, No Fault of Their Own: Unemployment and the Canadian Welfare State.
L. Brown, When Freedom was Lost: The Unemployed, the Agitator and the State.
The Great Depression – Effect on Immigrants
Research:
• In the 1930’s CDN’s experienced a profound economic recession complicated by drought and the collapse in trade
• Since many immigrants came to Canada as farmers or labourers, they were particularly vulnerable during the economic downturn
• “The public rightly ask, that you remove from this place, the Russian and other European people, who have only been in this country for a short time, and particularly the men of this class who are sending all their earnings back to Europe, should not be allowed to have the work on the Power and R.R. construction, while hundreds of Canadians are standing in the bread line.”
• One quarter of the labour force in Canada was unemployed
• Government was forced to respond to the pressure of the labour conditions with exclusionary immigration policies
• In 1930-31, the Canadian government responded to the Great Depression by applying severe restrictions to entry. New rules limited immigration to British and American subjects or agriculturalists with money, certain classes of workers, and immediate family of Canadian residents. The result was dramatic. In the 1930s, an average of about 16,000 immigrants entered Canada per year, an enormous drop from an average of about 126,000 per year during the 1920s
• Clifford Sifton, one of the architects of the turn-of-the-century boom in immigration to Canada, stated in 1899 that “there is no Exclusion Act in the Dominion of Canada” and that “it is no part of the duty of the Government…to appoint agents for the purpose of keeping people from coming to Canada.”[5] Thirty years later, the policies of Canadian immigration shifted to perform exactly that function.
• With screening abroad and at the border tightened, the immigration branch intensified their work in another area of exclusionary immigration practice: deportation. This had been developing for some time. After restrictive amendments to the immigration act passed in 1919, Secretary of Immigration F.C. Blair asked the minister of immigration and colonization to sign blank deportation orders in bulk. By way of reassurance, Blair stated that he was “convinced that this would not open the door to any abuse.”[6] Following these changes in policy and practice, the deportation rate during the Great Depression spiked to about six times prior rates, and about 25,000 immigrants were sent out of Canada. Although unemployed workers were key targets, illness, ideology, or perceived immorality were also grounds for deportation.
• Poverty was one of the main reasons a person might be excluded by Canadian immigration authorities. It was addressed in all the historical immigration acts and was particularly relevant during the hard times of the Great Depression. The Immigration Act, 1869, singled out pauper immigrants, making ships’ masters responsible for their maintenance and transportation to their destination in Canada. The 1906 act developed this further, prohibiting any immigrant “who is a pauper, or destitute, a professional beggar, or vagrant, or who is likely to become a public charge,” as well as those who became “a charge upon the public funds…or an inmate of or a charge upon any charitable institution” after arrival.[7]Despite these regulations, the commissioner of immigration wrote in 1930 that “…where the complaint in regard to a single man bears no reference to any physical or other disabilities and the extent of relief is negligible, the Department does not propose to issue a Minister’s Order unless there is additional material submitted in support”.[8]
• This tolerant approach weakened as the burden of public charges related to unemployment escalated. In her study of deportation, historian Barbara Roberts pointed to the example of Winnipeg, where the cost of public relief amounted to just over $31,000 in 1927-28. In 1930-31, the same cost was more than fifty times higher, at over $1.6 million.[9] This led to many petitions from cities and charities, requesting that the federal department of immigration take responsibility for—and deport—immigrants in a variety of situations
• s observed by the Toronto Star on November 1, 1930, deportation seemed “to be a rather flourishing business for the ocean boats and the Canadian railways, bringing out ten thousand persons per year and taking them back again.”[17] This is an overstatement, but the total deportation in this period is sizeable: between 1930 and 1937, 25,000 immigrants were deported. The average annual deportation rate was about six times the previous normal. For every two or three people admitted to Canada, one was being deported. The pace of deportation was such that in 1931, the immigration quarters in Montreal were over capacity, filled with people being sent back to their countries of origin. In Halifax, Pier 21’s detention facilities were also overwhelmed at times, and the local RCMP barracks had to be used.
• CDN’s had a heavy dependence on raw material and farm exports, combined with crippling Prairies drought
• there is general consensus that the Depression was the result of widespread drops in world commodity prices and sudden declines in economic demand and credit, leading to rapid declines in global trade and rising unemployment.
• Population growth throughout the 1930s reached the lowest point since the 1880s through a combination of plummeting immigration and birthrates.
• The number of immigrants accepted into Canada dropped from 169,000 in 1929 to fewer than 12,000 by 1935 and never rose above 17,000 for the remainder of the decade. During that time European Jewsfleeing Nazi Germany were denied a sanctuary in Canada (see Refugees). The number of Canada's deportations, however, rose from fewer than 2,000 in 1929 to more than 7,600 just three years later. Almost 30,000 immigrants were forcibly returned to their countries of origin over the course of the decade, primarily because of illness or unemployment.