Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The On-to-Ottawa Trek began on June 3, 1935 and ended with the Regina Riot on July 1. It was one of the flashpoints of social discontent in Canada at the height of the economic and unemployment crisis during the Great Depression of 1929–39. Although the participants in the trek did not achieve their specific goals, this event is considered an important factor in the defeat of the Conservatives in the election of 1935. The legacy of the trek is also linked to the subsequent closing of federal relief camps and amendments to the Criminal Code. The experience of the trek heightened labor and left-wing solidarity while showing that the most effective avenue for social action in the future would be representation in government. Over 1,300 unemployed men, most of them inmates of government-run relief camps in British Columbia, boarded east-bound freight trains in Vancouver with the intention of traveling to Ottawa. The men had gone on strike two months earlier, refusing to participate in a federal program of make-work projects for 20 cents per day plus meagre room and board. Organized by the communist-inspired Workers' Unity Party and led by Arthur “Slim” Evans, the strikers wanted to explain their grievances to Conservative Prime Minister W. B. Bennett in the nation's capital, and to present their demands for improved conditions in the camps, work for fair wages, and increased funds ... log in or subscribe to read full text