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relief camp
DCHP-2 (Mar 2013)
n. & adj. — historical, Administration
a work camp for unemployed men set up during the Great Depression.
Type: 5. Frequency — During the Great Depression, unemployment led tens of thousands of single men to roam the country in hopes of finding employment. Relief camps were set up by various levels of government as a response. R. B. Bennett's Conservative government established the national system of work camps on October 8, 1932. The camps were run by the Department of National Defence and provided shelter, clothes and food for unemployed single men. The men did menial work building roads and planting trees for low wages (see the 1931 quotation). The poor conditions of the camps led to much unrest among workers, who eventually reacted with strikes (see the OCCH, s.v. "relief camps").
See also COD-2, which labels the term "Cdn hist."
See also COD-2, which labels the term "Cdn hist."
Quotations
1930
Alleged to have incited the unrest among members of the government unemployed relief camp four miles east of the city and to have induced a number of them to prevent others from working, J. Hall and J. Boyd were yesterday sentenced to serve two months each in jail by Magistrate Geo. B. McLeod.
1931
Payment of 30 cents an hour for an eight-hour day, with a deduction of 80 cents a day for board and 50 cents a month for medical services will be made to men employed in the relief camps being established in northern Ontario by the provincial government for the construction of the Trans-Canada Highway.
Official details of the administration of the camps were issued by Hon. William Finlayson, Minister of Lands and Forests. Present plans are to get the camps into operation early in October.
1935
The Dominion government hopes to close all relief camps during the coming year, Hon. Norman McL. Rogers, minister of labor, announced.
[...]
The committee will start working immediately and intends visiting as many as possible of the 100-odd camps in Canada. The majority of these camps are located in British Columbia and Alberta. Approximately 20,000 men are in them at present.
1937
A strike of 100 single men in a highway relief camp near here remained unsettled tonight. The men have refused to work since Thursday, demanding wage increases and reductions in rates charged for board.
1974
In 1932 the federal government created the Unemployment Relief Scheme -- a system of relief camps providing subsistence shelter and work for homeless unemployed single men across Canada. Intended initially to handle 2,000 men the camps had swollen to hold 170,248 by 1936. A man there was paid 20 cents a day to work 5-1/2 days a week on projects like road and airport construction. This form of state-sponsored exploitation was stark, but in a country without a welfare system for either the sick or the unemployed it kept you alive, it kept you from starvation.
1986
During the Great Depression when Vancouver was seething with thousands of unemployed and to their numbers were added many thousands more - the destitute, homeless men who had abandoned the government's ill-conceived relief camps - a tag day was held.
1997
Annie turned her back on Flo 60 years ago, when the sisters found themselves on opposite sides during the Regina Riot, in which a mob of protesting relief-camp victims clashed with the police and RCMP.
2006
He worked to organize the Relief Camp Workers Union and in 1935 helped lead a strike as thousands of the unemployed left the camps and set out to take their grievances to the capital.
2012
Swankey's great age made him a valuable resource for those seeking witness accounts of the struggles of the Great Depression. He could speak with authority about the On-to-Ottawa trek of 1935, as he had helped organize support for the striking relief camp workers led by Arthur (Slim) Evans, whose biography he later wrote with Evans's daughter.
References
- OCCH
- COD-2
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