Introduction

As the topic for the second week of our case study, Citizens and Nation, we looked at the Great Depression and the Welfare State in Canada and how the different demographics were impacted across the country. As demonstrated in our weekly readings, the effects of the Great Depression, the introduction of the Welfare State in the country, and the response of the state during crisis varied greatly between the provinces.

While the increasing levels of poverty resulting from the Great Depression were very noticeable in provinces, such as Saskatchewan, where the “economy really plummeted,” [1] less economically sound provinces, including Prince Edward Island, experienced a less obvious spike in poverty levels as citizens were already struggling financially prior to 1929. As Heidi MacDonald writes in her article, “Doing More With Less: The Sisters of St. Martha (PEI) Diminish the Impact of the Great Depression”, “A significant factor in Islanders’ survival was the work of the Sisters of St. Martha in health and social services.”[2] Where the government failed to provide funding and aid to struggling Canadians, religious organizations including the Catholic sisters “were founded to serve the poor, whether in schools, health care, social services or some combination of these fields.”[3]

As religious organizations responded to meet the needs of countless men, women, and children in the impoverished province of Prince Edward Island, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, a Crown corporation, began exercising their state power on the issue of alcohol consumption. As Dan Melleck writes in his article, “The Same as a Private Home? Social Clubs, Public Drinking, and Liquor Control in Ontario, 1934–1944,” “The interaction between private interest and government oversight, and the rather large grey area between idealized club operations and the ‘wide-open’ drinking joint, provides a window into the complex relationships between public drinking, socialization, and the construction of appropriate social behaviour.”[4] The specific regulations regarding the consumption of alcohol were not limited to the elite members of the gentlemen’s clubs and sporting clubs, but were extended to the working class who gathered in saloons and taverns for recreation. However, one of the issues the Liquor Control Board had with the clubs of the working class is that they relied heavily of the sale of alcohol “to fund their operations,”[5] whereas the clubs of the elite could charge membership fees, thereby limited the sale and consumption of mass amounts of alcohol. Although the temperance act in Ontario was abolished in 1927, the Liquor Control Board played a critical role in controlling the alcohol industry in order to minimize the corruption that was believed to be associated with alcohol.

Finally, in British Columbia, the rates of unemployment due to the Great Depression were monitored on a monthly basis [6], creeping as high as 30% by 1933 [7]. Much like the individuals in need of aid in Prince Edward Island, the unemployed of British Columbia sought aid in cities such as Vancouver. In addition to being without work, the Great Depression created a stigma surrounding the unemployed, generalizing them as “outsiders and deviants.” [8]

Although each province had their respective struggles during and after the Great Depression, it is evident that economically sound provinces received more from the Welfare State and that the effects of the Depression shaped the way citizens were perceived in society and the activities they participated in.

[1] Heidi MacDonald, “Doing More With Less: The Sisters of St. Martha (PEI) Diminish the Impact of the Great Depression,” Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region, 21.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 23.

[4] Dan Malleck, “The Same as a Private Home? Social Clubs, Public Drinking, and Liquor Control in Ontario, 1934–1944,” The Canadian Historical Review, 558.

[5] Ibid., 565.

[6] Michael Ekers, “‘The Dirty Scruff’: Relief and the Production of the Unemployed in Depression-era British Columbia,” Antipode, 1119.

[7] Ibid., 1123.

[8] Ibid., 1126.