Características 52 

“[The unemployment problem] … is no occasion for faintheartedness but in the name of those who have fallen in the defence of the liberties of the country and in obligation to those who have returned from that struggle, the Canadian people have before them the task of presenting to the world, a nation morally and materially great, a monument worthy of the men living and dead who have made this possible.”1

- Harold Innis, “The Returned Soldier”

In 1919, Canada celebrated its “Victory Year.” The war was finally over. For those who came of age with the conflict, however, postwar life proved a poor reflection of the nationalist myths already being constructed. They may have won the war but now veterans struggled amidst a pessimistic and troubling reality: demobilization did not go smoothly and their resulting list of

grievances was long and often contradictory. Dashed hopes soon led to frustration and even despair as postwar Canada endured widespread and prolonged unemployment. These setbacks fuelled a sense among veterans, including writers such as F.P. Day, that not enough was being done to recognize and address the problems they faced after coming home.

Veterans did not initially expect to have trouble finding jobs. The war was waged for a better world and propaganda encouraged the belief that soldiers would return to a prosperous Canada. Department of Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment (DSCR) publicity material assured veterans that Returned

Figure 4. DSCR Poster advertising employment in “every province” of Canada.

Soldiers Commissions existed in “every province” to “secure proper Employment for all honourably discharged Canadian Soldiers.”2 _Such

advertisements touted all forms of work, from house painting to poultry farming to typewriting to teaching, mechanical farming, mechanical drawing, and work in machine shops. The wounded were not forgotten either. They would be employed using “ingenious” substitutes for missing limbs.

Veterans in need of recovery would recuperate for civilian life at garden clubs in convalescent hospitals. Whether rural or urban, industrial or agricultural, in the trades or the classroom, Canada was committed to putting its returned men back to work. Yet, when the country slid back into recession, returned men were particularly hard hit.

Historians acknowledge that some veterans struggled after the war, but few evaluations study how the postwar economic decline affected these men or their understanding of the war’s meaning. Histories of major labour unrest, including the Winnipeg General Strike and the On-to-Ottawa Trek, say little about how the war generation reacted to these struggles. More general considerations of how the war changed Canadian society are equally silent on the war’s economic legacy, focusing instead on the war’s impact on social reform, such as the temperance question, or shifting beliefs about the power of the state.3 _{In the case of Winnipeg in 1919, debate continues about}

the position of veterans during the strike, in part because returned men lined

2 See for example the DSCR , no. M.H.C. VII 5-2-18.

3 John H. Thompson, “ ‘The Beginning of Our Regeneration.’ The Great War and Western Canadian Reform Movements,” in R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer, eds., The Prairie West: Historical Readings (Edmonton: Pica Pica Press, 1985).

up both for and against the strikers.4 _{Their role during the On-to-Ottawa-Trek}

and the Regina Riots is even more ambiguous because most of the relief workers who protested were much younger than the war generation. As Bill Waiser argues, when the men in federal relief camps protested their

employment and living conditions, the march on Ottawa was led not by veterans but by “hundreds of young men, many still in their teens.”5

Conventional wisdom dictates that Canada’s veterans “were re- absorbed into civil pursuits without much unemployment or industrial disturbance.”6 _{While true, to an extent, for veterans who returned during the}

war, this was not the case for the postwar era. The notion that veterans reintegrated relatively easily into the postwar economy endures, a misconception which helps explain why their struggles have not been considered relevant to the discussion of the war’s wider meaning. Despite this misunderstanding, however, returned men were particularly affected by the 1920 downturn and by subsequent unemployment throughout the

interwar era. Admittedly, the picture of how badly these men struggled is

4 See for example, David Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Relations, and the Genearl Strike (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974), Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, When the State Trembled: How A.J. Andrews and the Citizens’ Committee Broke the Winnipeg General Strike (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), A. Ross McCormack, Reformers, Rebels and Revolutionaries: The Western Canadian Radical Movement, 1899-1919 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), D.C. Masters, The Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950).

5 Bill Waiser, All Hell Can’t Stop Us: The On-to-Ottawa-Trek and Regina Riot (Calgary: Fifth House, 2003), xi.

6 Report of the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, Book I, Canada: 1867- 1939 [Hereafter Rowell-Sirois Commission] (Ottawa, 1940), 100.

clouded by a lack of statistical information on unemployment generally but the records indicate that veterans faced serious hurdles after 1918.

Comprehensive employment figures were not kept during the interwar period and analysis of employment in the 1920s is limited by this lack of statistical data.7 _{An exception was the Dominion Bureau of Statistics,}

which began to make forays into employment research as early as 1920, but even this data was limited. It was derived from small averages of selected trades unions and, as a result, there is no consensus on how many men were unemployed at the outbreak of war or at its close.8 _{As the University of}

Toronto economist Gilbert Jackson complained, Canada could “scarcely claim to possess the data from which a calculation of the risks of unemployment could be made.”9 _{The era’s policy makers were forced to rely on estimates}

and no national statistics were recorded until after the Second World War.10

7. The most extensive considerations of Canadian employment in this era include James Struthers’ work in No Fault of Their Own: Unemployment and the Canadian Welfare State, 1914-1941 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983) and The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920-1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). The development of social security is better studied. See for instance Dennis Guest, The Emergence of Social Security in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997), Raymond Blake, From Rights to Needs: A History of Family Allowances in Canada, 1929-1992 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), and Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).

8. Struthers, No Fault, 13.

9. Jackson, quoted in Struthers, No Fault, 20.

10 Although important steps were taken to compile statistical portraits of unemployment in Canada after 1920, no regular measure existed before 1945. See Dave Gower, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/studies-etudes/75-001/archive/e-pdf/87-eng.pdf 4 June 2014.

In the 1920s and 1930s the unemployed were not “counted regularly”11 _and

Ottawa “did not even know how many Canadians were unemployed.”12 _{It is}

11 Bothwell, Drummond, and English, Canada 1900-1945, 219.

12 Thompson and Seager, Canada, 1922-1939, 26. Estimates for the 1920s suggest that the average unemployment rate for the decade was 3.5%. The figure is a poor reflection of the difficulties faced in the early 1920s because the percentage is artificially buoyed by the more prosperous period between 1926 and 1929. See Fortin, http://www.csls.ca/repsp/1/06- fortin.pdf, 114. According to James Struthers, the real unemployment rate between 1920 and 1925 was nearly double the average for the decade. The years with the highest rates were 1921 (8.9), 1922, and 1924 (both at 7.1). See James Struthers, No Fault, 215. In 1921, nearly 250,000 men were unemployed, approximately twelve percent of the projected labour force. Such figures, while offering a more accurate picture of the overall unemployment situation, are more a reflection of the distribution of unemployment in the economy generally and they remain silent about the overall numbers of unemployed. See M.C. Maclean, et al., Census Monograph No. 11, Unemployment: A Study Based on the Census of 1931 and Supplementary Data

(Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1938), 23. Other estimates indicate that the country’s unemployment rate was considerably higher, especially during the fall and winter months. See “1,500 Returned Men Without Employment,” Globe, 13 June 1924, 12. In January 1920, Ottawa’s department of labour concluded that Canada’s unemployment rate was sixteen percent. The report did not expect the situation to improve soon. See “Unemployment on Increase in Canada,” Globe, 27 April 1921, 3.

Unemployment on the prairies is less well documented, but is estimated at equally high rates. Anecdotal figures from James Gray suggest it “may well have reached 20 or 25 per cent” in the region’s urban centers. See James H. Gray, The Roar of the Twenties (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975), 71. The most dire years could well have been worse. Kenneth Buckley reported in 1955 that the unemployment figures for the interwar era were skewed by the failure to recognize that in times of economic difficulty excess farm work tended to stay on the farm. Moreover, there may even have been a “reverse movement from the cities to the farms.” See Kenneth Buckley, Capital Formation in Canada, 1896-1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955), 46, 152 n. 22. Regardless of the rate, it should not be forgotten that the proportion of men of working age actually declined after the war. See O.J. Firestone, Income and Wealth Series VII: Canada’s Economic Development, 1867-1953: With Special Reference to Changes in the Country’s National Product and National Wealth (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1958), 55. Between 1870 and 1910 men aged 15-64 rose from fifty-four per cent to sixty-four percent. The losses incurred during the war forced these figures down and by 1920 the percentage of working age men had declined to 61½ percent. The percentage did not rise to 1910 levels until 1939 (when it reached 65½ percent).

unsurprising, therefore, that scholars consider it nearly “impossible” to document the scope of interwar unemployment.13

Social scientists began extensive study of the economy in the 1930s to address the lack of information on the labour market. This work contributed to policy debates about the role of government and business in the market, but it rarely focused on veterans.14 _{Rather, it examined the causes of}

unemployment, studies of regional or municipal reactions to labour issues, and the role of private industry. L. Richter’s Canada’s Unemployment Problem

(1939) was one of the major publications released during the era. It was the first study published by Dalhousie’s Institute of Public Affairs, which coordinated research between the governments of Newfoundland, the Maritime Provinces, and the region’s universities. Leading social scientists, including Harry Cassidy, Director of Social Welfare in B.C., Dorothy King, Director of the Montreal School of Social Work, and A. MacNamara, deputy minister of Public Works and Labour in Manitoba, contributed to the volume. The U of T economist, S.A. Saunders, acknowledged that returned soldiers received assistance for unemployment immediately after the war, but none of the remaining studies of the relief question considered veterans’ place in

13. Gray, The Roar of the Twenties, 71. See too C.P. Gilman and H.M. Sinclair,

Unemployment: Canada’s Problem (Ottawa: Army and Navy Veterans in Canada, 1935), 17, which also laments the “paucity” of data on unemployment.

14 See for example Norman Rogers’ Foreward to L. Richter’s edited collection,

postwar society or how unemployment affected them.15 _{Instead, these men}

were lumped into the wider pool of unemployed workers.

The tendency to overlook veterans was also true of other studies produced earlier in the 1930s. F.R. Scott and Harry Cassidy’s Labour

Conditions in the Men’s Clothing Industry (1935) was an important report on urban labour but it said nothing about jobless veterans in the clothing industry.16 _{The same is true of Leonard Marsh’s research, which did not}

highlight the plight of unemployed veterans although it did acknowledge that postwar unemployment was a product of the war’s aftermath caused in part by “commercial, monetary, and political dislocations which derive from the War.”17

Despite a lack of concrete statistics, by 1921 it was estimated that 200,000 Canadians were unemployed, “many of them veterans.”18 _According

to Desmond Morton, “too many veterans had chosen overvalued or

15 The omission is notable because the book contains work by leading experts, such as Harry Cassidy and Charlotte Whitton.

16 F.R. Scott and H.M. Cassidy, Labour Conditions in the Men’s Clothing Industry: A Report (Toronto: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1935).

17 Leonard Marsh, Employment Research: An Introduction to the McGill Programme of Research in the Social Sciences (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1935), 44. Marsh expands on this “dislocation” in a chapter on “Industrial Fluctuations.” The conflict left a “legacy of overequipment and inflated capital values in its wake,” he wrote. See Employment Research, 197.

unproductive land in the Soldier Settlement plan.”19 _{The promises of “full re-}

establishment” boiled down to a “brutally simple” reality: returned men would have the “renewed privilege of fending for themselves in a business- like, profit driven society.”20 _{In the estimation of the Great War Veterans’}

Association (GWVA), unemployment among veterans was “intolerable.” Instead of life getting better after 1919, it got worse. Unemployment increased between 1920 and 1921, and veterans were the group “most severely

affected.”21

During the early 1920s, the GWVA produced the most statistical information on returned men. Yet its estimates were as varied as others, making it difficult to compare the figures with municipal, provincial, and federal records. In 1919 the association counted at least 1,500 members who were unemployed in Toronto and it estimated the provincial figure to be close to five thousand.22 _{Provincial soldiers’ aid commissions, tasked with}

finding employment for veterans, reported that need for relief was so great that Ontario’s relief funds were “considerably” overdrawn.23 _{Churches and}

19 Desmond Morton, “The Canadian Veterans’ Heritage from the Great War,” in J.L. Granatstein and Peter Neary, eds., The Veterans Charter and Post-World War II Canada

(Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 27. 20 Morton and Wright, Winning the Second Battle, 104.

21. “Unemployment on Increase in Canada,” Globe, 27 April 1921, 3.

22. AO, RG 8-5, Soldiers Aid Commission, B226501, “Notes of Interview with Gentlemen Representing the G.W.V.A. Introduced by Sergeant Conroy, District Secretary for Toronto District,” 19 February 1919 [hereafter “Notes of Interview”].

23. AO, RG29-165, Soldiers’ Aid Commission, Minutes of the Soldiers’ Aid

Commission, 31 December 1919; AO, RG 8-5, B226501, Soldiers’ Aid Commission, “Notes of Interview.”

benevolent societies noted similar pressures as unemployment increased. Veterans living in urban centres were especially hard hit. In 1922, the Toronto Brotherhood Federation recognized that returned soldiers were badly

affected by the economic downturn. In response, the federation put out an “S.O.S.,” asking individuals to pledge for relief efforts for unemployed

veterans. The appeal reminded the city’s congregations of the debt they owed the country’s returned soldiers:

The Christian Churches received much praise for helping to secure volunteers for the great conflict. Now that it is over and nobly won and the men are back with us, many of them in distress the Churches will not stand by and see them suffer for lack of the mere necessaries of life.

The plan here proposed by the Toronto Brotherhood Federation, and endorsed by the authorities of the different Churches, is simple, direct and effective.

He who gives quickly gives twice.24

But community efforts could not solve unemployment, however well intentioned, and jobless veterans continued to face difficulty into the 1920s. By the winter of 1924, job prospects were so poor that returned soldiers had resorted to hoping for winter storms to make extra money removing snow.25

The economy improved halfway through the decade but

unemployment problems continued. George Parker, for example, was an experienced pipe fitter. Despite his training, he was unemployed and

24. “Churches Will Hear Appeal for Members to Come to Aid of Distressed Returned Men,” Globe, 14 January 1922, 13.

25. “Snow Proves Boon to Many Soldiers and Workless Men,” Globe, 21 February 1924, 8.

desperately seeking a job. In 1926, Parker wrote Ontario’s premier, Howard Ferguson, asking for a letter of introduction. He hoped to secure a position with the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railroad, but was

uncomfortable asking for such assistance. The precarious state of the

economy forced him to put aside his “regret.” As he explained, “things have come to such a pass, that I am almost desperate.”26 _{Ferguson was sympathetic}

but did little more than direct the veteran to an official at the northern railway. The premier regretted that Parker was in such a condition. He emphasized, however, that his hands were tied by the fact that others in the province were in similar circumstances. “The conditions all over the Province … are very serious,” he explained. He could do nothing more to help.

According to estimates, the unemployment rate in 1926 had fallen to under five per cent. Yet, in spite of the increase in jobs, Ferguson’s letter painted an especially dreary picture of veterans’ employment prospects: “In a centre like Toronto particularly there are thousands of men walking the streets, and similar conditions prevail in every centre in the Province.”27

Five years later, by the second year of the Great Depression, veterans in urban centres, such as Toronto, were even worse off. In 1931, the city’s Central Bureau of Unemployment Relief produced one of the most detailed accounts of urban unemployment. It tracked age, physical condition,

residence, economic status, family responsibilities, and nationality of the

26. AO, RG3-6-0-961, Civil Service Applications for Positions #1, Parker to Ferguson, 1 January 1926.

27. AO, RG3-6-0-961, Civil Service Applications for Positions #1, Ferguson to Parker, 7 January 1926.

unemployed. The bureau calculated that between August and November there were 36,500 unemployed men. A large number— 7,310—were veterans. The bureau’s figures do not specify how old these men were but by 1931 the vast majority of the war generation were aged 36 to 55, indicating that their ranks accounted for approximately 52% of unemployed men.28 _{According to}

the Hyndman Report on unemployment of ex-service men, by the mid 1930s as many as twenty percent of non-pensionable veterans were unemployed.29

Table 1. Age Distribution of Unemployed Men, Toronto (17 August to 30 November 1931)30

Age Single Married Total

20 and under 2,801 108 2,900 21 to 35 8,875 7,563 16,438 36 to 55 4,056 9,930 13,986 56 to 69 883 2,159 3,042 70 and over 49 126 175 Total 16,664 19,886 36,550

28 Cassidy, Unemployment and Relief in Ontario, 38.

29. This figure was an approximation based on the exclusion of pensionable men and those estimated to be receiving municipal or federal departmental relief. With these men excluded from the total of CEF veterans, it means that of the roughly 189,000 men not eligible for some sort of assistance, at least 38,000 of these were unemployed. No explanation is provided in the report for how the committee reached these figures. See Report of the Committee Appointed to Carry Out an Investigation into the Existing Facilities in Connection with Unemployment of Ex-Service Men and Care and Maintenance while Unemployed, and to Report Thereon with such Suggestions and Recommendations as may be Deemed Advisable (Ottawa: King’s