Canada’s Raw Deal

Harvey Smith recently came across an article on the Canadian Broadcasting System’s history/learning website, Le Canada, about the Tory alternative to FDR’s New Deal during the early years of the Great Depression:  involuntary work camps for  unemployed men.

R.B.Bennett Prime Minister of Canada, 1930-35

Prime Minister R. B. Bennett
R.B.Bennett
Prime Minister of Canada, 1930-35

Such men  posed a threat of popular rebellion  in the mind of the conservatives of the time.  As one veteran of the camps put it, “The Tory government of R.B. Bennett had decided a role for the single unemployed. They were to be hidden away to become forgotten men, the forgotten generation.”Fortunately, that government was voted out in 1935 and the camps were abolished.

 

 

 

Read more at https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP13CH2PA2LE.html

Richard A Walker is the director of the Living New Deal.

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