The Great Depression in Canada

Throughout the years of 1929 to 1939, there was a world wide Depression. Canada was one of the countries that was most affected. Financially and economically the country began to collapse regardless of what was done by political power. The Great Depression, also known as The Dirty Thirties, wasn’t like an ordinary depression where savings vanished and city families went to the farm until it blew over. This depression affected everyone in some way and there was basically no way to escape it.

With so much economic pressure and upset the country turned to politics to hopefully clean up the situation that they were facing every day. The Prime Minister at that time Mackenzie King was not being helpful to Canada because he thought Canadian provinces were well capable of handling things on their own. When provinces were after his help, Mackenzie King said he was not going to give “a five-cent piece” meaning he wasn’t going to help any province financially. Canadians voted Mackenzie King out of parliament, in order for Richard Bennett to take over. Richard Bennett was a lawyer with lots of plans for all Canadians. He first came up with the idea of creating Relief Camps for thousands of homeless and single men who roamed the country in search of work. He also invented Cars that were having to be towed by horses because gasoline could not be afforded were called “Bennett Buggies”.

There were many economic problems throughout the great depression. In the stock market crash, the government had abandoned the people of Canada by not giving financial aid to those in need. That was one of the main problems that started the whole domino effect. Many of the companies that had the most Canadian employees. For example car manufacturing companies were forced to close down since they were left with no money. This had a big effect on many Canadians since they were workers of big companies and since they were to close down, all the workers were left unemployed. With no income, the Canadian economy dropped very dramatically. Many car companies had full parking lots of new cars with no hopes of people buying them.

Many families went from milliners to homeless in less than a week. All their hard work was gone down the drain. The movie they had invested on the stock market was gone, plus they had to pay for all the items they had bought on credit. There was no way they could pay bank loans without even having a job so their only hope was bankruptcy. Many people that had no money invested in the stock market even though it was still affected by the stock market crash. Banks also declared bankruptcy because they also bought stocks and since the stock market crashed, they were also left with nothing, so the savings of innocent people were lost too.