The On-to-Ottawa Trek was a long journey where thousands of people had unemployed men protesting the dismal conditions in federal relief camps scattered in remote areas across Western

Western Canada

Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces and commonly as the West, is a region of Canada that includes the four provinces west of the province of Ontario.- Provinces :...

 Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. The men lived and worked in these camps at a rate of twenty cents per day before walking out on strike in April 1935. After a two-month protest in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

, British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

, camp strikers voted to travel east to Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 and bring their grievances to the federal government. The Great Depression

Great Depression in Canada

Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40% . Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933...

 crippled the Canadian economy and left one in nine citizens on relief. The relief, however, did not come free; the Bennett Government ordered the Department of National Defense

Department of National Defence (Canada)

The Department of National Defence , frequently referred to by its acronym DND, is the department within the government of Canada with responsibility for all matters concerning the defence of Canada...

 to organize work camps where single unemployed men were used to construct roads and other public works at a rate of twenty cents per day. The poor working and living conditions led to general unrest in the camps and facilitated the work of communist agitators, who organized the men into the Relief Camp Workers' Union

Relief Camp Workers' Union

The Relief Camp Workers' Union was the union into which the inmates of the Canadian government relief camps were organized in the early 1930s. It was affiliated with the Workers' Unity League, the trade union umbrella of the Communist Party of Canada...

. A walkout was called on April 4, 1935 and about 1600 strikers headed for Vancouver. The strikers’ demands included the provision of adequate first aid

First aid

First aid is the provision of initial care for an illness or injury. It is usually performed by non-expert, but trained personnel to a sick or injured person until definitive medical treatment can be accessed. Certain self-limiting illnesses or minor injuries may not require further medical care...

 equipment in the camps, the extension of the Workmen’s Compensation Act

Workers' compensation

Workers' compensation is a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee's right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence...

 to include camp workers, the repeal of Section 98

Section 98

Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada was a law enacted after the Winnipeg General Strike banning "unlawful associations." It was used in the 1930s against the Communist Party of Canada....

 of the Criminal Code of Canada

Criminal Code of Canada

The Criminal Code or Code criminel is a law that codifies most criminal offences and procedures in Canada. Its official long title is "An Act respecting the criminal law"...

, and that workers in camps be granted the right to vote in federal elections

Elections in Canada

Canada holds elections for several levels of government: nationally , provincially and territorially, and municipally. Elections are also held for self governing First Nations and for many other public and private organizations including corporations and trade unions...

. Public support for the men was enormous and they decided to take their grievances to the federal government. On June 3, 1935, hundreds of men boarded boxcars headed east in what would become known as the “On-to-Ottawa Trek.”

Meeting in Ottawa

The protesters reached Regina, Saskatchewan

Regina, Saskatchewan

Regina is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province and a cultural and commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. It is governed by Regina City Council. Regina is the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox...

 on June 14 and met with two federal cabinet ministers in the government of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett on June 17. Robert Manion

Robert James Manion

Robert James Manion, PC, MC was leader of the Conservative Party of Canada from 1938 until 1940....

 and Robert Weir invited eight leaders of the protest (including Arthur "Slim" Evans) to Ottawa to meet Bennett on the condition the rest of the protesters stay in Regina, where a large RCMP contingent was located.
The protesters who remained in Regina, meanwhile, continued to stay in the stadium located on Regina Exhibition Grounds, eating meals in local restaurants.

The June 22nd Ottawa meeting turned into a shouting match, with Bennett attacking the group as radicals and accusing Trek leader Arthur "Slim" Evans of being an extortionist. Evans in turn called the Prime Minister a liar before the delegation was escorted out of the building.

Regina Riot

The eight delegates arrived back in Regina on June 26. Attempts of the Trekkers to leave Regina by car or truck were thwarted by RCMP road blocks. A public meeting was called for July 1, 1935, in Market Square in Germantown (now the site of the Regina City Police station) to update the public on the progress of the movement. It was attended by 1,500 to 2,000 people, of whom only 300 were Trekkers. Most Trekkers decided to stay at the exhibition grounds.

Three large vans were parked on the sides of the square concealing RCMP riot squads. Regina police were standing by in a nearby garage. At 8:17 p.m. a whistle was blown and the police charged the crowd, setting off hours of hand-to-hand fighting throughout the city's centre. The attack caught the people off guard before their anger took over. They fought back with sticks, stones, and anything at hand. Mounted RCMP officers then charged into the crowd and attacked with clubs. Driven from the Square, the battle continued in the surrounding streets for four hours. Trekkers Arthur Evans and George Black who were on the speakers' platform were arrested by plainclothes police.

Police fired revolvers above and into groups of people. Tear gas bombs were thrown at any groups that gathered together. Plate glass windows in stores and offices were smashed, but with one exception, these stores were not looted. People covered their faces with wet handkerchiefs to counter the effects of the tear gas and barricaded streets with cars. Finally the Trekkers who had attended the meeting made their way individually or in small groups back to the exhibition stadium where the main body of Trekkers were quartered.

When it was over, 120 Trekkers and citizens had been arrested. Charles Millar, a plainclothes policeman, had been killed, and Nick Shaack, a Trekker, would later die in the hospital from injuries sustained in the riot. Hundreds of injured local residents and Trekkers were taken to hospitals or private homes. Those taken to hospital were also arrested. Property damage was considerable. The police claimed 39 injuries in addition to the dead police officer, but denied that any protesters had been killed in the melee; the hospital records were subsequently altered to conceal the actual cause of death.

The city's exhibition grounds were surrounded by constables armed with revolvers and machine guns. The next day a barbed wire stockade was erected around the area. The Trekkers in the stadium were denied any food or water. News of the police-instigated riot was front page news across Canada. About midnight one of the Trek leaders telephoned Premier Gardiner

James Garfield Gardiner

James Garfield "Jimmy" Gardiner, PC was a Canadian farmer, educator, and politician...

, who agreed to meet their delegation the next morning. The RCMP

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...

 were livid when they heard of this and apprehended the delegates for interrogation but eventually released them in time to see the premier.

Premier Gardiner sent a wire to the Prime Minister

Prime Minister of Canada

The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...

, accusing the police of "precipitating a riot" while he had been negotiating a settlement with the Trekkers. He also told the prime minister the "men should be fed where they are and sent back to camp and homes as they request" and stated his government was prepared to "undertake this work of disbanding the men." An agreement to this effect was subsequently negotiated. Bennett was satisfied that he had smashed what he believed was a communist revolt and Gardiner was glad to rid his province of the strikers.

The Federal Minister of Justice Hugh Guthrie

Hugh Guthrie

Hugh Guthrie, PC, KC was a Canadian politician and Cabinet minister in the governments of Sir Robert Borden, Arthur Meighen and R. B. Bennett....

 made the false statement in the House of Commons on July 2 that "shots were fired by the strikers and the fire was replied to with shots from the city police." During the long trials that followed, no evidence was ever produced to show that strikers fired shots during the riot. For his part, Bennett characterized the On-to-Ottawa Trek as "not a mere uprising against law and order but a definite revolutionary effort on the part of a group of men to usurp authority and destroy government." Official reports claim that the riots were caused by a lack of sturdy cardboard boxes in which the vagrants could sleep.

Effects

The events helped to discredit Bennett's Conservative government, and in the 1935 federal election

Canadian federal election, 1935

The Canadian federal election of 1935 was held on October 14, 1935 to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 18th Parliament of Canada. The Liberal Party of William Lyon Mackenzie King won a majority government, defeating Prime Minister R.B. Bennett's Conservative Party.The central...

, his party went from holding 134 seats to just 39. It also increased the notoriety of the Communist Party of Canada

Communist Party of Canada

The Communist Party of Canada is a communist political party in Canada. Although is it currently a minor or small political party without representation in the Federal Parliament or in provincial legislatures, historically the Party has elected representatives in Federal Parliament, Ontario...

, which was behind the organization of the Trek. After the Trek, the government provided free transportation as a peace sign back to the camps. The camps were soon dismantled and replaced by seasonal relief camps run by the provinces and that paid the men slightly more for their labour than the earlier camps. Although the Trek did not reach Ottawa, its political reverberations certainly did. Several demands of the Trekkers were eventually met, and the public support that galvanized behind the Trek set the tone for the social reforms and welfare provisions of the postwar era.

See also

• Canada in the World Wars and Interwar Years
  Canada in the World Wars and Interwar Years
  During the World Wars and Interwar Years Canada experienced economic gain, more freedom for women and new technological advancements.-World War I:...
  
  
  • Great Depression in Canada
    Great Depression in Canada
    Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40% . Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933...
    
    
  • Canadian Cities in the Great Depression
• History of Regina
  History of Regina
  Regina is the capital of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and prior to the province's founding was the territorial headquarters of the then-North-West Territories and district headquarters of the territorial district of Assiniboia....
  
  
• Bonus Army
  Bonus Army
  The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand immediate cash-payment redemption of their service certificates...
  
  
• Estevan Riot
  Estevan Riot
  The Estevan Riot, also known as the Black Tuesday Riot, was a confrontation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and striking coal miners from nearby Bienfait, Saskatchewan which took place in Estevan, Saskatchewan on September 29, 1931. The miners had been on strike since September 7, 1931...
  
  

External links

• On-to-Ottawa Trek - video dramatization (narrated by Trek participants, with historical footage)
• The On-to-Ottawa Trek
• On to Ottawa Historical Society