Unemployment

The Great Depression of the 1930s severely impacted British Columbia, leading to a widespread economic collapse and mass unemployment across Canada. Many young men traveled to the West Coast, seeking refuge from the hardship in the milder climate. This video...

This bronze plaque is located at the corner of Mt. Seymour Parkway and Northlands Dr. in North Vancouver, BC. It was developed with the support of the Deep Cove Heritage Society. The plaque was cast at Ornamental Bronze, a unionized...

This bronze plaque is located on the Main St. overpass near E Waterfront Road in Vancouver, BC. It was developed with the support of the On to Ottawa Historical Society, which merged into the BC Labour Heritage Centre in 2018....

Project News was a publication of the Relief Project Workers' Union (RPWU) The RPWU was successor to the Relief Camp Workers' Union, a creation of the Workers' Unity League which had led the 1935 strike that culminated in the On-to-Ottawa...

This document provides a comprehensive bibliography and resource guide for the "On to Ottawa Trek" and related events during Canada's Great Depression. It was compiled by David Yorke for the On to Ottawa Historical Society prior to its merger with...

This 640-acre area was a military training ground, then a Great Depression relief camp, later Vancouver’s main training facility during World War II. The Blair Rifle Range is now an unsafe urban wasteland.

This booklet discusses the dire economic period of the 1930s in Canada, and the critical social crisis that emerged with widespread unemployment. As a response, the government established remote Relief Camps where single, unemployed men were forced to work for...

During the Great Depression, unemployed men took to the rails, with the intention of arriving en masse in Ottawa. While they did not reach their destination, this protest lives on in memory. Students are introduced to the economic and political...

While documenting the events of the 1938 Relief Camp Workers sit-down strikes and occupations in downtown Vancouver, this film presents their reasons for the protest, and the radically differing reactions to their collective protest by the three levels of government:...

Robert (Bob) Smeal (1920-1976) describes his experiences as a young unemployed man during the Great Depression in the 1930s in Vancouver. He details his involvement with various unemployed organizations, including the Single Unemployed Protective Association (SUPA) and the Relief Camp...

With a population of 2,479 in 1931, the city of Prince George, BC had hundreds of unemployed. That year, a branch of the communist-led National Unemployed Workers Association (NUWA) was established in the Prince George District. Under the watchful eye...

Despite police predictions that it would be a “dismal failure”, 6,000 men, women and children descended on the Powell Street grounds (now Oppenheimer Park) in Vancouver on February 22, 1932 for a “Hunger March”, organized by the Communist Party of...

During the dirty ‘30s, thousands of single, unemployed men were forced into federally run relief camps: isolated, militarized work sites where they worked under punishing conditions for just 20 cents a day. In this episode of On the Line, we...

In April 1935 thousands of single unemployed men organized by the Relief Camp Workers’ Union went on strike to demand “Work and Wages” as the Depression wore away at the country. “Snake parades” through city streets were frequent during the...

The On-to-Ottawa Trek in 1935 is a fabled part of Canada’s labour history. Thousands of unemployed men, frustrated with the lack of compassion from government to their plight, hopped atop freight trains in Vancouver with a plan to confront Prime...