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On to Ottawa Trek/Regina Riot

Article by Michael Snider

Published Online March 17, 2003

Last Edited December 16, 2013

This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on July 1, 2002. Partner content is not updated.

Pulling down the bill of his hat, Jack Geddes squinted against the Prairie wind. Perched atop the boxcar of a moving train, Geddes could just make out the Alberta foothills. Beyond them, through the thick, black smoke belching from the steam engine, lay the snow-capped Rockies. Painfully hungry, the 18-year-old hobo lay back on the boxcar's iron catwalk, covered himself with his Hudson's Bay blanket and let the rocking train lull him to sleep. Two days to Vancouver, he thought. And if relief couldn't be found there, well, there were always the "slave camps."

It was 1932 and Canada was in the relentless grip of the Great Depression. The country's lifeblood - exports of natural resources like wheat, lumber, fish and minerals - had all but dried up, plummeting in value from $1.12 billion in 1929 to $576 million. More than one out of four people seeking work couldn't find any. Prime Minister R.B. BENNETT 's Conservative government initially responded to the crisis in 1930 with $20 million for public works projects. A huge sum for the time, but not nearly enough. Fear of communist rabble-rousers stirring up the wandering unemployed prompted Bennett to establish relief camps, later called slave camps by those who lived there. Run by the Department of National Defence, the camps became powerful symbols of Ottawa's lack of concern for the unemployed. In June, 1935, more than 1,000 of these desperate men set out from B.C. to confront Bennett in the nation's capital. Fearing a snowballing rebellion, the government waylaid the ON TO OTTAWA TREK in Saskatchewan and, on the July 1 holiday, crushed it in what became known as the REGINA RIOT , the most violent episode of the Great Depression. One man died and more than 100 were injured.

The Dirty Thirties offered little hope for too many. There was no unemployment insurance, no medical coverage, no old age pension. "There were no jobs and we weren't wanted," says 85-year-old Gene Llewellyn, who as a 16-year-old in 1933 left his Terrace, B.C., home to ease the burden on his parents. "We'd come into a town, and they'd run you out."

The only alternative to riding the rails or eking out an existence in the hobo jungles that sprung up beside most major cities was to seek aid in the relief camps. No one expected the camps - established in October, 1932, to house and provide work for single, unemployed homeless men - to be around for very long. They were considered a temporary solution because most believed the Depression itself would be temporary. But by 1935 there were nearly 150 relief camps dotting the country, 53 of them in British Columbia largely because of its warmer climate. Workers spent 44-hour weeks doing construction or land clearing in exchange for three square meals and a 20-cent per day allowance. For the men, the 20 cents solidified their belief they were working in slave camps. While authorities prohibited any attempt to form unions, the harsh lifestyle ironically gave organizations like the Communist Party of Canada a captive and receptive audience. "These men were just like any of us," says Bill Waiser, author of Park Prisoners , a book about how Canada's national parks were used as work camps. "They wanted jobs, they wanted a home and a family. Putting the men in camps, you focus their discontent. Then on come the communists who say, 'You're being exploited.' "

Still a proud member of the Communist Party, 90-year-old Robert "Doc" Savage of Quesnel, B.C., can't recall who came up with the idea to take their demands to Bennett's desk in Ottawa. Savage simply remembers organizing 400 men on the morning of June 3, 1935, and leading them - along with more than 1,000 others - onto the boxcars and out of Vancouver's rail yard singing the union hymn: Hold the fort, for we are coming. Union men be strong. Side by side we battle onward. Victory will come . "We were joyous," says Geddes who grew up in Calgary but now lives in White Rock, B.C. "We were going to Ottawa and we were going to lay our problems at the feet of R.B. Bennett."

People along the way prepared a welcome at nearly every stop. The local press called the trekkers "our boys" and westerners, who identified with their issues, generally embraced them. And at most stops, more single unemployed men piled onto the boxcars and joined the journey.

Ottawa believed the protest would run out of steam before the mountains. But when the train descended from the Rockies into Calgary, Bennett's home riding, the prime minister prepared for a confrontation. Unwilling to risk the political fallout of a Calgary showdown, Bennett decided to draw the line in Regina. On June 14, the 50-car freight rolled into the Queen City. After the marchers disembarked to stretch their legs, Bennett banned them from getting back on. Stalling for time in the hope the trek would fizzle out peacefully, the prime minister invited a contingent of strikers, including Savage, to meet with him in Ottawa. Eight of the leaders sat down with Bennett for an hour on June 22, but the tone of the meeting was belligerent and ended in bitter failure.

Returning to Regina, Savage and the leaders faced new challenges. Their transportation had been cut off, the exits to the city blocked and rumours surfaced that a relief camp was being prepared to intern them all. Recognizing defeat, the trek leaders promised to disband provided they could leave Regina. The RCMP refused, insisting the only place the 2,000 men were going was to a specially prepared camp in Lumsden, 25 km northwest of Regina.

On July 1, after hours of bitter discussions with local officials, the march leaders called a meeting. That evening, between 1,500 and 2,000 people filled Regina's Market Square. Most, though, were townsfolk with their families observing the local drama on the holiday Monday. As for the trekkers, most of them were watching a baseball game in another part of the city. More than 300 RCMP dressed in riot gear were concealed in large moving vans parked on three sides of the square, with another 50 nearby on horses. Dozens of local police waited in a garage right off the square.

As one of the leaders took the stage and began to speak, a whistle blew. Using baseball bats and billy clubs, the police waded into the crowd. "They opened the door and out they come beating the hell out of us," remembers Geddes. "They chased us all over town." RCMP threw teargas into Market Square to break up the crowd and the riot spilled into adjoining streets. A pitched battle raged for more than three hours. At one point, several people set upon a plain-clothes policeman and beat him to death. Late into the night, as about 300 rioters cornered a small troop of police, the commanding officer ordered his men to fire over the crowd's heads. Seventeen people were wounded, including five Regina residents. By morning, among the more than 100 people sent to hospital were 40 police. "The amount of people I saw with their heads bashed in was terrible, really terrible," recalls Geddes.

The march had been crushed and some of its leaders arrested. But the severity of the riot sobered both protestors and government. The trekkers were allowed to return home or to the B.C. relief camps. Bennett, blaming the riot on communist agitators, endorsed an inquiry that whitewashed the authorities of any wrongdoing. According to Waiser, a University of Saskatchewan history professor: "In truth, it was a police-provoked riot. They raided a peaceful meeting and the people fought back."

Bennett, however, did not escape the fallout. In the federal election campaign three months after the Regina Riot, the prime minister promised radical reforms, including health and unemployment insurance as well as a minimum wage. But it was too late. In October, 1935, William Lyon Mackenzie King soundly defeated Bennett.

Less than a year later, a federal investigation concluded that maintaining the relief camps was no longer "in the best interests of the state." After housing 170,000 men over 3 ½ years, they were closed. But for many of the hopeless men who lived in them and took part in the protest, the trek had provided a purpose. "We were pretty militant, but we had a reason to be," says Llewellyn. "If you were going hungry in the richest country in the world you would have done it too."

Maclean's July 1, 2002

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The On-To-Ottawa Trek

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The Great Depression was a terrible time for Canadians. Work was hard to find, crop prices were low and drought steeped through the prairies. Unemployment had reached historic levels with one in nine Canadian citizens needing government relief. The government provided relief, but that relief was not free. Under Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, the Department of National Defence was ordered to create work camps where unemployed single men could construct roads and other projects, earning 20 cents per day, or $3.77 a day today. There were also restrictions on what the men could do in their free time.

With these incredibly low wages, and poor living conditions where the workers often didn’t have adequate clothing, the men of the camps decided to unite in 1933, creating the Workers’ Unity League, led by Arthur Evans, also known as Slim. This organization would then organize the Relief Camp Workers’ Union.

According to one striker, Ron Liversedge, “The Tory government of R.B. Bennett had decided a role for the single unemployed. They were to be hidden away to become forgotten men, the forgotten generation. How naïve of Mr. Bennett. Never were forgotten men more in the public eye.”

In December 1934, the organization held a strike with men leaving the camps and protesting in Vancouver. For two months they protested and occupied a Hudson’s Bay store, the city museum and the library. On May Day, a parade of 20,000 strikers was held, along with supporters, marching to Stanley Park. The strikers would return to their camps after the provincial government and City of Vancouver made the promise of forming a commission to look at the complaints. A commission was never formed, most likely because the government assumed that the problem would go away. With no commission, a second walk-out was organized for April 4, 1935.

With this walk-out, 1,000 strikers then made the decision to travel to Ottawa with a list of demands. They demanded .50 cents an hour, or $9.42 an hour today, for unskilled work, union wages for skilled work, at least 120 hours of work a month, adequate first aid at camps and the extension of the Workmen’s Compensation Act to include camp workers. They also wanted recognition of their democratically elected workers’ committees, and the right to vote in elections for workers in camps. They also wanted the government to remove the Department of National Defence as the overseer of the camps.

Throughout Canada, the strikers had immense support from regular citizens, many of whom were dealing with poor economic conditions themselves. Among the governments, the municipal governments pushed blame to the provincial governments, while provincial governments pushed blame to the federal governments.

On June 3, the men boarded box cars and headed west in what would be known as the On-To-Ottawa Trek, making stops in Calgary, Medicine Hat, Swift Current and Moose Jaw. In Calgary, 300 men joined the Trek. By the time they reached Regina, some estimates put the number of protesting men at 4,000.

On the Trek through the Prairies, the leaders of the Trek put down strict rules forbidding any panhandling or drunkenness. The entire group of protesters were organized into companies and sections, like an army would be, to ensure that no one got out of hand and each group elected their own leaders. The trekkers were also clean-shaven and well-behaved, which impressed those they met along the way out east. People referred to the strikers as “our boys” highlighting their respect and admiration for the well-behaved group.

In Medicine Hat, Calvin Cavan would relate his memory of seeing the strikers.

“I remember witnessing the historic trek to Ottawa when that train load of men went through Dunmore to see Prime Minister R.B. Bennett in Ottawa. It was unbelievable. They were so numerous that they were like flies on a jam pail.”

Eleven days later, the protesters reached Regina and on orders from the federal government, the railways refused to allow further travel on their trains. On June 17, the strikers met with Robert Manion and Robert Weir, two federal cabinet ministers. The ministers said that eight elected representatives, with Evans serving as the leader, could come to Ottawa to meet with the prime minister. The condition put forward was that the rest of the protesters would stay in Regina. The protesters stayed in the stadium at the Regina Exhibition Grounds, with food supplied by the provincial government and the people of Regina.

The decision to keep the protesters in Regina came from Bennett himself, who did not want them to reach Winnipeg, which he felt was, in his words, “notable for labour radicalism.” It was in Winnipeg that the Winnipeg General Strike, the largest strike in Canadian history, had been held a decade and a half prior. You can listen to me relate the history of that strike on an earlier episode of the podcast.

In fact, as soon as the Trek was announced in British Columbia, a local support committee was set up in Winnipeg with the leader of the Co-operative Farmer’s Federation, S.J. Farmer, serving as the chair and local Communist James Litterick serving as the vice-president. The organizers had plans for feeding the men when they arrived, as well as the estimated 1,000 men who would arrive from the Manitoba relief camps.

For Premier Gardiner of Saskatchewan, he was not happy the trek had been allowed to proceed and then stopped in Regina. He was also not happy that the RCMP were being ordered by Ottawa without any reference to the province. The federal government was able to do this because they invoked the Railway Act, which allowed them to oversee the law enforcement of the province, while stopping the train from traveling any further. Gardiner would point out that the trekkers could not be called trespassers by the CPR and CNR because they had provided them with train cars to ride on, whether they realized it or not, to that point.

As for the eight men, they would reach Ottawa and have a June 22 meeting with Bennett. It did not go well. Bennett accused Evans of being an embezzler and Evans called Prime Minister a liar. The delegation was then escorted out of the building and to the street. They would return to Regina on June 26. The On-To-Ottawa protesters attempted to travel east by car, truck and train but were stopped by the RCMP. It was decided that they would head back to the west coast since they could no longer head east, but the federal government insisted that the group disband on their terms, which involved going to a holding facility where the men would be processed. The leadership of the strikers did not want to do this and they turned to Premier Gardiner and his cabinet for assistance.

In the evening of July 1, 1935, while the provincial cabinet was meeting to discuss the proposal, a public meeting was held in Market Square, ironically where the Regina City Police Station is now located, to update the public on the progress of the movement. Only 300 On-To-Ottawa Trekkers were there, but the crowd numbered over 1,500 people.

A poster for the rally would state, “hear the reply of the authorities to Strikers delegation requesting immediate relief and opening of negotiations on counter-proposals to Bennett Government’s offer on Concentration Camps.”

On three sides of the square moving trucks were parked and behind those trucks were RCMP riot squads. Regina police were in the garage of the police station as well. At 8:17 p.m., a whistle was blown and the police charged into the crowd with batons from all four sides. The people, who were caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the police, fought with sticks and stones. According to one person at the rally, “they opened the door and out they come beating the hell out of us. They chased us all over town.” Another witness would say, “A shrill whistle blasted out a signal. The backs of vans were opened and out poured the Mounties, each armed with a baseball bat. In less than four minutes, Market Square was a mass of withering, groaning forms, like a battlefield.”

The citizens and protesters were driven from the square but with the RCMP blocking the way back to the stadium, a street battle would begin and last for the next six hours. According to some Regina residents, who testified afterwards, some police had continued to club already unconscious men on the ground.

During the street battle, police fired their guns above and into groups of people while tear gas bombs were thrown at any groups of people that had gathered together. During the battle, glass windows in stores were broken, but only one store was actually looted. The stores were burned to the ground through.

The Regina Rifles, while not involved in the riot directly, were made available to guard vital points such as the Legislative Building.

In order to counter the tear gas, many people wore wet handkerchiefs on their face and would barricade the street with cars to protect themselves. Over the course of the six hours, the protesters would make their way back to the stadium individually or in small groups, joining the rest of the larger group of protesters who had stayed at the stadium.

Over 140 protesters and citizens were arrested by the end of the riot, and Charles Miller, a policeman in plainclothes and Nick Schaak, a protester, would die from injuries sustained in the riot. Hundreds of residents and protesters were injured as well. Any protesters or residents who went to hospitals were arrested.

The police stated that 39 of their men had been injured, and they denied any protesters had died. The police also stated they did not use guns, even though 17 civilians had gun shot wounds, while no police officer was shot. Protester leaders Arthur Evans and George Black who spoke at the rally were arrested as well.

The day after the riot, a barbed wire stockade was erected around the area where the protesters were staying on the exhibition grounds and news of the riot had reached across Canada.

In Regina, the Leader-Post had the headline “Chaos On Streets For Three Hours, Policemen stoned and strikers shot in heart of city.” Another headline on that same page said, “caught when mad riot starts, women, children trampled in stampede.”

Saskatchewan Premier Gardiner agreed to meet with the protesters but the protesters were arrested as they left the area, only to be released soon after for their meeting with the Premier.

Only eight people, all strikers, would be convicted on charges of rioting and sentenced to prison.

Premier Gardiner, after speaking with the protesters, wired the prime minister and stated that the police had created the riot and that the men should be fed where they are and sent back to their camps and homes as they had requested. He was unhappy that the federal government had invaded into provincial jurisdiction as well. Bennett, believing the had put down a communist revolt, agreed, while Gardiner seemed happy to have the protesters out of the province. The Saskatchewan government did provide free transportation back to British Columbia for the protesters as a gesture of peace.

While Hugh Guthrie, the Minister of Justice, would state on July 2 that the protesters had fired shots at the police, to which the police responded, no evidence was ever found to show the protesters had shot at police. The RCMP, who stated they believed that the protest was a plan for armed revolution, were exonerated of all charges by the investigating Royal Commission. The Royal Commission, chaired by Chief Justice J.T. Brown, stated in its report that the federal government and RCMP should be exonerated and that the living conditions and food at the work camps was satisfactory. All blame for the trek and the riot was put on communists. The commission took the testimony of 359 people, who provided 53 volumes of testimony, most of whom put the blame on the police. As we see, that was ignored.

Bennett, who was very behind the times with The Great Depression, would say of the riot that it was “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”

The Trek and the Regina Riot would not bode well for Bennett, who would see his support in the 1935 federal election plummet from 135 seats to 39, costing him his position as Prime Minister. Following the election defeat of Bennet, bringing William Lyon Mackenzie King back to power, the camps would be dismantled and replaced with seasonal relief camps run by the provinces, with the men earning slightly more than before.

While the entire Trek did not reach Ottawa, its demands would be met over time as the public support for the protesters spread across Canada, helping to set up the social and welfare initiatives that would follow the Second World War.

For some of the trekkers, their lives would change in other ways thanks to the trek and riot. Bessie Noble would relate that she was on her summer holidays in 1935 when she travelled to Regina to visit her Aunt Bell and Uncle Bert. It was there she met Joe McKeown, who was one of the trekkers. McKeown had been a seamen on the Great Lakes before losing his job. When the riot broke out, Bessie’s aunt took Joe into her home to take shelter. It was there he would meet Bessie and the two would marry in December of that year. Their son, also named Joe McKeown, who would become a Regina City Councillor and put forward a proposal for a peace fountain out front of City Hall where citizens could gather to successfully and peacefully settle conflicts.

At the Fredrick W. Hill Mall in Regina, a plaque highlighting the historic protest and riot can be found. On the plaque, there is little mention of the police storming the crowd, or the reasonable demands of the protesters. Instead, it focuses on the failure of the relief projects for unemployed single men.

“A defining event of the Great Depression, the On-To-Ottawa Trek has become a poignant symbol of the working class protest. In 1935, over 1,000 angry unemployed men left federal relief camps in British Columbia and boarded box cars to take their demand for work and wages directly to Ottawa. As the number of protesters increased, the federal government resolved to stop the movement. The police arrested its leaders at a meeting on July 1, sparking the Regina Riot. Although it never reached Ottawa, the Trek marked the failure of the Depression-era work camps as a solution to widespread unemployment.”

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Information comes from Canadian Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Canadas History, the Regina Leader Post, CBC, Parks Canada, Regina Before Yesterday, Up The Johns The Story Of The Royal Regina Rifles, Alberta A New History, Let Us Rise A History Of the Manitoba Labour Movement, Plains Trains and Wagon Wheels, Regina Cemetery Walking Tour, Saskatchewan A History, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, The Mackenzie Papineau Battalion.

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On-to-Ottawa Trek

1935 protest movement by unemployed workers against the canadian government / from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, dear wikiwand ai, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:.

Can you list the top facts and stats about On-to-Ottawa Trek?

Summarize this article for a 10 year old

The On-to-Ottawa Trek was a mass protest movement in Canada in 1935 sparked by unrest among unemployed single men in federal relief camps principally in Western Canada . The trek started in Vancouver and, picking up reinforcements along the way, was conducted by riding traincars eastward. The trek was stopped in Regina where on July 1, 1935 police dispersed it with loss of life and mass arrests.

Federal relief camps were brought in under Prime Minister R. B. Bennett ’s government as a result of the Great Depression . The Great Depression crippled the Canadian economy and left one in nine citizens on relief. [1] The relief, however, did not come free; the Bennett government ordered the Department of National Defence 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 men in the relief camps were living in poor conditions with very low wages. The men decided to unite in 1933, led by Arthur "Slim" Evans , an officer of the Workers' Unity League (WUL). [2] The Workers' Unity League helped the men organize the Relief Camp Workers' Union .

A strike was held in December 1934 with the men leaving the various camps and protesting in Vancouver , British Columbia . After a two-month protest, they returned to the camps after a promise of a government commission to look into their complaints. When a commission was not appointed a second strike was approved by the members and a walkout was called on April 4, 1935.

About 1,000 strikers headed for Ottawa. [3] The strikers' demands were: “(1) that work with wages be instituted at a minimum of 50cents per hour for unskilled workers and trade union rates for skilled labour on the basis of a six-hour day, a five-day week with a minimum of twenty work days per month; (2) that all workers in the camps be covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act and that adequate first aid supplies be carried on the jobs at all times; (3) that the National Defence and all military control with the system of blacklisting be abolished; (4) that democratically elected committees be recognized in every camp; (5) that there be instituted a system of noncontributory unemployment insurance; (6) that all workers be given their democratic right to vote; (7) that Section 98 of the Criminal Code, Sections 41 and 42 of the Immigration Act and all vagrancy laws and anti-working class laws be repealed”. [4]

Public support for the men was enormous, but the municipal, provincial and federal governments passed responsibility between themselves. They then decided to take their grievances to the federal government. On June 3, 1935, hundreds of men began boarding boxcars headed east in what became known as the "On-to-Ottawa Trek".

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The Regina Riot

During the Great Depression, more than a thousand single homeless unemployed men rode the rails in an organized protest that led to a bloody clash.

In early April 1935, hundreds of dissatisfied, disillusioned men walked out of Department of National Defence relief camps throughout British Columbia and descended on Vancouver in a bold attempt to reverse their dead-end lives and bring about some kind of “work for wages” program.

The walkout, coordinated by Communist-affiliated Relief Camp Workers’ Union, was a direct challenge to the R.B. Bennett Conservative government and its handling of the single homeless unemployed during the Great Depression.

For the first few weeks in Vancouver, the strikers eked out a hand-to-mouth existence, while the federal and provincial governments wrangled over responsibility for the men.

As the stalemate dragged on and strikers began slipping away, it was suggested that the men take their grievances to Ottawa and directly confront the Bennett government. This bold idea galvanized the strikers’ flagging spirits.

This short documentary by Ben Lies of Badlands Productions explains some of the factors that led to what became known as the On-To-Ottawa Trek.

The trek was a bigger gamble than the walkout. Ottawa was more than 3,000 miles away, and the strikers would have to travel there atop boxcars.

An estimated 1,000 On-to-Ottawa trekkers left Vancouver by freight train in early June 1935. No attempt was made to stop them. Police and government authorities confidently assumed that the resolve of the men would melt away like the snow in the interior mountains.

Even Prime Minister Bennett, convinced that the strikers had misplayed their hand, announced that his Conservative administration would simply watch from the sidelines.

Despite many hardships, the men made it through the mountains. By the time the men left Calgary, the trek had taken on the aura of a crusade. More men joined the trek and many communities welcomed the trekkers like modern-day folk heroes.

What began as a strike against federal relief camps had been transformed into a popular movement against the federal government’s handling of the Depression.

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As the trek grew in popularity, police, military, and government authorities, decided it had to be stopped.

On June 11, Regina-based RCMP Assistant Commissioner Wood personally advised Saskatchewan Premier James Gardiner that a decision had been made to stop the trek in Regina.

Despite Gardiner’s protests of the federal decision, the Mounties moved to arrest the ringleaders at a peaceful public rally at Regina’s Market Square on Dominion Day.

The raid quickly degenerated into a pitched battle between the police and trekkers and citizens, which spilled over into the streets of downtown Regina.

Order was not restored until the early hours of the next day, but only after the city police emptied their guns directly into a crowd of rioters.

The toll from the riot was two dead, hundreds injured, and thousands of dollars of damage to the city.

Sadly, Premier Gardiner’s earlier warning — that stopping the trek would result in a riot — had come true.

Hearings held later by the Regina Riot Inquiry Commission absolved police of wrongdoing.

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A more-detailed article was published in the August-Septemeber 2016 issue of Canada’s History .

Bill Waiser is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan and the author of more than a dozen books, including All Hell Can’t Stop Us: The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot .

Themes associated with this article

• Peace & Conflict
• Politics & Law
• Prime Ministers
• National Politics
• Provincial/Territorial Politics
• Social Justice

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An earlier trek to ottawa had a different tone but still captured the nation.

Deep in the Great Depression, about 1,000 men attempted to reach Ottawa to reform relief programs. Most didn’t make it but they eventually achieved their aims.

By Ian Austen

On Friday afternoon there were two starkly different views from the Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa, where I’ve been working. Immediately out front, hundreds of angry protesters were alternately shouting a mix of abuses and pleas for law enforcement to leave and singing “O Canada” following a daylong effort by a mass of police officers to push them out of a truck blockade that had particularly snarled traffic. But from my room’s window looking toward the heart of the anti-vaccine trucker blockade on Parliament, protesters were relatively scarce as the truck drivers revved their engines and honked their horns, apparently in warning.

The full-court press by the police that started Friday appeared to be bringing a close to the blockade, which became entrenched in the city three weeks ago. (Although, as always with this protest, things may have changed by the time most of you read this.)

We will continue reporting on the blockade by protesters until the streets are clear, and beyond. It began with some truckers angry about a federal vaccine mandate and, as it appears to be nearing its end, has become a disruptive and angry cry to “take back freedom.”

This, however, was not the first time protesters have set out on a much-publicized trip to Ottawa from Western Canada.

During the Siege of Ottawa in 1910, a group of about 500 farmers who traveled from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba were allowed to take over the House of Commons’ chamber to read a long list of agricultural grievances.

But the most similar, and yet also most different, protest intended to reach the capital was the 1935 On to Ottawa Trek . Deep in the Great Depression, about 30 percent of Canadians were jobless and about 20 percent were on some kind of public relief program.

For single men, that meant living and working in Unemployment Relief Camps. Operated by the military, the camps had grim conditions and paid well below even the depressed wages of the time.

A group of camp workers started a two-month-long protest in Vancouver, which included occupying a department store, a library and a museum. When that got them nowhere, about 1,000 trekkers hopped aboard freight trains with the goal of reaching the capital.

They made it only to Regina before Prime Minister R.B. Bennett ordered the railways to remove them from their trains. But eight trekkers were allowed to continue to Ottawa for meetings with government officials, while the remainder camped out in Regina’s exhibition grounds.

The meetings were a disaster. Bill Waiser, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Saskatchewan, who has written extensively about the trek, told me that they “descended into a shouting match.”

On July 1, the police moved into the Regina fairgrounds and a riot broke out, which Professor Waiser said was entirely the fault of the police. Two people died, many were seriously injured, and 130 were arrested. Property damage was widespread.

Professor Waiser said that one similarity between the truckers’ convoy today and the 1935 trek is that members of each felt that the government would not listen to them. But, beyond that, he said, things diverge.

The Trek was organized by communists with specific demands for collective solutions for dealing with unemployment. The demands of the current protest, by contrast, are often vague and always about individual freedom. They are also profoundly unconstitutional (for example, demanding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau order provinces to cancel all pandemic measures, or that the governor general and the Senate seize control of government).

In contrast to the chaos and disruption the current protesters have brought to Ottawa, Professor Waiser said, the trekkers were highly disciplined. “If there was anything that you’ve seen today or during that first week on Parliament Hill, that would not have been tolerated, you would have been evicted from the trek,” he said on Friday.

Above all, though, while polls have shown that the current protest has failed to win over most Canadians, Professor Waiser said that the trekkers gained broad public esteem.

That, perhaps, led to many of their demands being fulfilled over time. Professor Waiser said that the trek was the “tipping point for the failure of the Bennett government.” More important, he said, it shifted public perceptions. After the trek, unemployment was no longer seen “as sign of personal failure” but as a failure of the economy. That paved the way for unemployment insurance and other social programs.

Many of the trekkers, Professor Waiser said, went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. “And then some of them fight in the Second World War,” he added. “Well, those are true patriots.”

In case you missed them, here a few of our many items from the past week about the blockade:

The week began with the police reopening the bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit.

The long-running border blockade in Coutts, Alberta, also ended. Before it did, the police made several arrests seized of a large cache of weapons and ammunition from a group within the protest.

Amid a growing outcry about police inaction , Ottawa’s police chief resigned.

Many people questioned the police’s gentle, often friendly treatment of protesters before Friday’s move on the blockade.

It started as a relatively obscure convoy, but it became the subject of global attention.

The blockade’s organizers include former law enforcement officers , military veterans and conservative organizers.

Catherine Porter discussed the protest on “The Daily.”

We covered the first major police action on Friday .

Trans Canada

Canada took back Olympic hockey gold this week. Alan Blinder wrote that the victory by the women’s team “was a display of strong-armed, swarming play, blended with a few doses of luck and an angsty, furious drive that started with the Olympic loss in 2018.”

At least 10 people died and many more were missing after a Spanish fishing boat sank off the coast of Newfoundland.

In her new essay collection, “Run Towards the Danger,” Sarah Polley, the actress and filmmaker, examines intensely personal stories she’s still sorting out for herself.

Ivan Reitman, the producer, director or both of some of the biggest film comedies of the last 45 years, died at the age of 75.

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

How are we doing? We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to [email protected] .

Like this email? Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here .

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto and currently lives in Ottawa. He has reported for The Times about Canada for more than a decade. More about Ian Austen

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On-to-ottawa trek national historic event.

• On-to-Ottawa Trek  (Designation Name)

Importance: Culmination of failure of Canada's depression-era relief projects for unemployed single men

A defining event of the Great Depression, the On-to-Ottawa Trek has become a poignant symbol of working class protest. In 1935, over a thousand angry unemployed men left federal relief camps in British Columbia and boarded boxcars to take their demand for work and wages directly to Ottawa. As the number of protesters increased, the federal government resolved to stop the movement. The police arrested its leaders at a public meeting on July 1st, sparking the Regina Riot. Although it never reached Ottawa, the Trek marked the failure of the Depression-era work camps as a solution to widespread unemployment.

On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot

In October 1932, Ottawa finally accepted responsibility for the single, homeless unemployed roaming the country in search of work and established a national system of camps under the auspices of the Department of National Defense (DND). The men were fed, clothed, sheltered and paid 20¢ per day in exchange for their labour on various make-work projects. Although the scheme was universally applauded at the beginning, it did not take long for the camps to become the focus of disillusionment and discontent, especially since Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett seemed to place greater importance on where the men were, as opposed to what they were doing. In April 1935, hundreds of disgruntled men walked out of DND relief camps throughout British Columbia and descended on Vancouver in a bold attempt to reverse their dead-end lives and secure some meaningful employment. But no level of government wanted to help the men - least of all the federal government, which believed that the Communist Party of Canada had orchestrated the protest. Eventually, the relief camp strikers decided to go to Ottawa and present their grievances directly to the Prime Minister.

An estimated 1,000 On-to-Ottawa trekkers left Vancouver by freight train in early June 1935. No one expected the men to survive the trip through the mountains; but the same kind of organizing zeal that had kept the strike going in Vancouver gave the trek a seemingly unstoppable momentum as it headed across the prairies. After the trek had left Calgary, picking up more recruits, the federal Minister of Justice publicly branded the trek a Communist plot and announced that the RCMP would stop the unlawful movement in Regina. Saskatchewan Premier J.T. Gardiner was infuriated by the federal order to dump the men on the doorsteps of the provincial capital like unwanted waifs; he also predicted that the massing of the mounted police could only lead to riot. But Gardiner's ranting and hand-wringing were dismissed as partisan theatrics, and all the Saskatchewan government could do was prepare for the arrival of the trek, now numbering an estimated 2,000 men, in the early morning hours of June 14.

The much-anticipated Regina showdown turned into a prolonged stalemate between the trekkers and the police, lasting over two weeks. On June 17, two federal Cabinet ministers met with the trek leaders in Regina, and after failing to reach any kind of agreement invited them to send a delegation to Ottawa to deal directly with the Prime Minister. But instead of resolving the standoff, the Ottawa meeting degenerated into a shouting match between Bennett and trek leader Arthur “Slim” Evans . The trekkers refused to give up, however, and tried to send a group of men eastward by car and truck on June 27 - only to have the convoy intercepted by the mounted police. With no way out of Regina, and with their own funds exhausted, the trekkers decided to end the trek and return to the West Coast. Ottawa insisted, however, that the men had to disband on federal terms, that is, go to a nearby holding facility at Lumsden where they would be processed.

Sensing the Lumsden camp was a trap, the trek leadership turned to the Gardiner government for assistance on the afternoon of July 1, the Dominion Day holiday. Later that evening, while the provincial Cabinet was meeting to discuss the trekkers' request, the RCMP, with the support of the Regina City Police, decided to execute arrest warrants for the trek leaders at a public rally at Market Square. The mounted police could easily have made the arrests at any time during the day, but with clubs and tear gas at the ready, they chose to pluck the men from a peaceful fund-raising meeting. Not unexpectedly, the raid quickly degenerated into a pitched battle between the police, trekkers and citizens, which spilled over into the streets of downtown Regina. Order was restored early the next day, but only after the city police had fired directly into a crowd of rioters. The toll was two dead - not one, as usually reported - and hundreds injured, as well as tens of thousands of dollars of damage to downtown Regina. A provincial commission, which included former Premier William Martin , later blamed the trekkers for the riot while completely exonerating the police. The new Liberal government in Ottawa, meanwhile, insisted that its hands were tied by the findings of the Saskatchewan commission and refused to do anything further.

Bill Waiser

Further Reading

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• Colleges & Universities
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• Encyclopedia of British Columbia
• Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names
• Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest
• From the West Coast to the Western Front
• Go Do Some Great Thing
• Indian Fishing
• Lilies and Fireweed
• On the Line
• Tofino and Clayoquot Sound
• Where Mountains Meet the Sea
• Pacific Seaweeds
• The Sea Among Us
• Views of the Salish Sea
• A Field Guide to the Identification of Pebbles
• Birds of the Pacific Northwest
• Identification of Pebbles
• Identification des cailloux
• Insects of the Pacific Northwest
• Medicinal Wild Plants of Canada
• Seashells & Shellfish of the Pacific Northwest
• Trees of the Pacific Northwest
• Wildlife of the Rocky Mountains
• Indian Horse
• Take Us to Your Chief
• The Lesser Blessed
• Knowbc Blog
• Marine Encyclopedia Blog
• Dan Francis' Blog
• Sponsoring Partner’s Message
• Introduction
• 1. Beginnings
• 2. British Columbia and Canada Take Root
• 3. A New Century and New Labour Awareness
• 4. The Great Vancouver Island Coal Strike
• 5. The Great War and Canada’s First General Strike
• 6. One Big Union

7. The On-to-Ottawa Trek

• 8. Ballantyne Pier and Other Battles
• 9. Blubber Bay, Bloody Sunday
• 10. World War II
• 11. Postwar Politics
• 12. Bad News Bennett
• 13. A New Nationalism
• 14. Jailings, a Fired-up Fed and Public-Sector Fightback
• 15. That Seventies Socialism
• 16. Inflation for the Nation
• 17. New Tactics and Workplace Tragedies
• 18. Operation Solidarity
• 19. Expo 86 and a New Premier
• 20. War and Peace under the NDP
• 21. Picking on the Public Sector
• 22. Back to School
• 23. The Golden Tree and Fighting for Workplace Safety
• 24. The Struggle Continues
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography

No era in Canadian history is as well-defined as the Depression. Even the dates are precise, from the spectacular Wall Street crash on October 29, 1929, to the beginning of World War II on September 3, 1939. The bottom fell out of the economy, inflicting untold misery and poverty on millions of Canadians—whether ill-fated Saskatchewan farmers, eastern factory workers or labourers in BC’s once humming woods and mines. By the time it ran its course, the Depression had shown once and for all the inadequacy of an unregulated free market and the need for government action to ensure a decent life for ordinary people.

The ten lost years were characterized by government indifference. There was nothing like the New Deal of US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt that did so much to limit the plight of millions of hard-hit Americans. Instead, those unable to find work in Canada were provided with extremely meagre relief payments if they had a family—or if single, forced into work camps for a pittance. Both R.B. Bennett and William Lyon Mackenzie King, the country’s two prime ministers during the 1930s, were more concerned with balancing the budget than helping citizens in desperate need. Those who protested were more often than not clubbed or thrown into jail. “The image of a policeman’s truncheon bringing a shabbily dressed man to his knees was to become familiar,” wrote Pierre Berton in his angry book The Great Depression .

The Depression seemed to come out of nowhere. As the Roaring Twenties neared their end, prosperity continued its multi-year roll. Investors were making fabulous riches on paper from the ever-rising stock market, financing their wealth by loans and buying on margin. Production was at record highs. But consumers couldn’t buy everything. Worrisome stockpiles of unsold products began to accumulate. Then in the fall of 1929, the stock market’s Black Thursday, October 24, was followed by the even more catastrophic Black Tuesday of October 29, and the house of cards collapsed. Billions of dollars were lost in a single day. The Great Depression was on, triggered at its most basic level by overproduction, under-consumption and a sea of credit based on expectations of endless growth.

Products moving through BC’s formerly busy ports declined nearly 60 percent. Lumber production, critical to the province’s economic health, fell 30 percent. A scourge of horrendous poverty and unemployment fell over the land, never seen before or since. By 1933 one-third of all eligible wage earners, 1.5 million Canadians, were without work, many with no social safety net. For hundreds of thousands of mostly young Canadians, riding the rails, occupying jungle camps, visiting soup kitchens and bumming a meal became part of the rhythm of daily life. Large numbers of Prairie families driven from their land by dust storms, drought and plagues of grasshoppers added to the desperation.

Before long, with its relatively mild climate, Vancouver became the unemployment capital of Canada. In the fall of 1931, Andrew Roddan, minister of the First United Church, told a visiting federal cabinet minister that his church’s bread lines were feeding more than 1,200 people a day. Hundreds were sleeping in shacks made of bits of tin and wood, while others slept outside, often in the rain, among rats “as big as kittens,” Reverend Roddan reported. When a local restaurant began handing out bags of bread crusts at the end of the day, a hundred men would show up every evening for the scraps.

As most labour unions focused on their own members, and politicians with no answers tried to pass responsibility to other levels of government, the country’s Communist Party (CP) came to the fore. From its founding at a 1921 clandestine meeting in an Ontario barn, where the twenty or so delegates slept in the hayloft, the party had grown in influence during the 1920s. Although ever subject to the policy whims of the Moscow-based Communist International (Comintern), the CP had developed a base of skilled, committed organizers, who found the country’s hard-pressed industrial workforce and hordes of single unemployed men tailor-made for action. Ordered by the Comintern to abandon its previous policy of working within established unions, the CP established its own radical federation in early 1930, just as the Depression hit. The Workers’ Unity League (WUL) was to hold its red banner high for the next five years and play a major role in confronting authorities and the forces of capitalism.

A union of the unemployed affiliated with the WUL was soon leading regular protests and hunger marches demanding, with some initial success, better relief. Still, assistance remained barely above subsistence levels and predominantly restricted to families. For the masses of unemployed single men, many of whom washed up on the West Coast, there was nothing but charity. The WUL’s involvement in organizing the unemployed made authorities nervous. “Communist agitators,” they feared, were stirring up revolution among the throngs of jobless hanging around Vancouver and other cities.

To get them off the streets and away from the clutches of the Workers’ Unity League, the federal government devised a network of relief camps, perhaps the most mean-spirited of all the country’s responses to the ravages of the Depression. Most were wilderness work sites far from the city, where single unemployed men received bare-bones accommodation, skimpy food and paltry compensation in return for their labour. The first camps provided $1.15 a day. The men worked building roads, parks and other public facilities. A year later, pay was down to $7.50 a month. A year after that, all relief camps were taken over by the Department of National Defence. The daily stipend was further reduced to the derisory sum of twenty cents, and the trouble began.

Rather than squelching unrest, the camps proved fertile ground for communist organizers. While few camp workers had any interest in Stalin, they appreciated efforts to improve their lot and fight back against the camps’ harsh military-like rule. The Relief Camp Workers’ Union, a direct charter of the Workers’ Unity League, became a force in all eighty-three BC camps. Braving blacklists, camp residents staged numerous strikes and protests to demand better conditions, keeping abreast of activities in other locations through the union’s popular, surreptitious newsletter, the Relief Camp Worker . Much of the successful organization could be attributed to the efforts of one driven individual: Arthur H. “Slim” Evans.

Novelist of the Depression

There is no Canadian equivalent to John Steinbeck’s powerful Depression novel The Grapes of Wrath . But British Columbia did have Irene Baird and Waste Heritage . Her stark, uncompromising account of...

In short order, Evans would become a household name across Canada and a red flag to governments, police and the courts wherever he led a fight on behalf of workers or the unemployed. Fiercely committed to working-class struggle, the lean carpenter in his mid-forties had already been wounded once and jailed three times for his role in union battles, including most recently in Princeton. There, a miners’ strike provoked cross burnings and frightening threats by a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, violent attacks on peaceful pickets, a late-night vigilante attack on a local union leader and the kidnapping of Evans himself. Yet it was Evans who went to prison, serving more than a year in jail on a charge of advocating the overthrow of the Canadian government during the strike. When he rejoined the relief camp protests in late 1934 as district organizer of the Workers’ Unity League, protests began in earnest.

Responding to growing strife in the camps, Evans and the Relief Camp Workers Union declared a strike on April 4, 1935. Their rallying cry, “Work and Wages,” was to resound for the rest of the Depression. Nearly fifteen hundred camp workers answered the summons to Vancouver, pouring into the city by rail, road and foot. The presence of so many young, restive unemployed men with no money and nothing to do, under the leadership of communists, unnerved civic leaders. Flamboyant mayor Gerry McGeer bombarded Ottawa with demands that they be rounded up and sent back to the camps.

But organizers displayed an astounding ability to feed and billet the strikers, keep them occupied and, most importantly, maintain order and discipline. In defiance of civic ordinances, they raised funds with regular tag days. Men wearing sashes that read “When Do We Eat?” worked four-hour shifts at busy street corners, holding out tin cans for donations. A sympathetic public showered them with cash. On one bumper Saturday, tin-canners brought in a record-breaking $5,500. With a sense of mischief, Evans, who had been up for forty-eight hours organizing the all-out blitz, asked police to safeguard the tidy sum until the banks opened Monday morning. When two officers arrived to carry off the money, he told them it was “Moscow Gold.”

Little was left to chance. The men were organized into four divisions, each with its own leader. There were committees for just about everything. All reported to the central strike committee headed by Evans. “We couldn’t slice a loaf of bread into five bologna sandwiches without appointing a committee to see it was done according to plan,” division leader Steve Brodie joked later. Hunger marches, demonstrations, tin-canning, large public rallies and boisterous snake dances through downtown streets became as familiar to Vancouverites as the North Shore mountains. May Day produced the largest parade in the city’s history.

Mother’s Day was even better. The Mothers’ Council, a broadly based, left-wing women’s group that was formed to muster sympathy for “our boys,” led a large Mother’s Day march to Stanley Park. There, they formed a giant heart around the young relief camp workers. That night, mothers across the city invited strikers to their homes for a meal. It was, said one event planner, “something of real value instead of the usual bourgeois, maudlin sentimentalism associated with Mother’s Day.”

The only trouble occurred during an impromptu snake dance through the aisles of the Hudson’s Bay Company on April 23. When police arrived to evict the protesters, a large glass display case was shattered and merchandise strewn about. Hundreds then marched down Georgia Street to the Victory Square cenotaph, where squads of RCMP, provincial police and city police surrounded them in a tense stand-off. A delegation of strikers was dispatched to the mayor’s office to try to defuse the situation. The twelve-member delegation got nowhere with the bullheaded Gerry McGeer. As they left his office, all but one was arrested for vagrancy. McGeer proceeded to a corner of Victory Square for a much-ridiculed reading of the Riot Act.

Six weeks into the strike, however, despite waves of public sympathy, there was no sign of either the city or Ottawa granting relief, providing “work and wages” or forcing them back to the camps. Running low on food, the stalemated strikers needed something different. On May 18, their four divisions marched off in different directions. Two headed to local department stores, one went to the West Vancouver ferry depot, while the fourth followed a familiar route toward Main and Hastings. But this time, catching police off guard, they strolled into the city library on the corner, headed up the spiral staircase of what is today the Carnegie Centre and began occupying the civic museum on the third floor. Barricading the door, they posted a large sign on the window: “When Do We Eat?”

Large, supportive crowds gathered in the streets below. Well-prepared, the men lowered baskets on a string. Citizens filled them with bread, pies and pastries from neighbourhood bakeries, jugs of coffee, cigarettes, chocolate and sweets. The bounty proved too much for some, who hadn’t eaten well in days. Bottles of pills were sent up to ease their stomach discontent. As police fumed, jubilant snake dances took over Hastings Street, accompanied by lusty renditions of the strike’s rallying song, “Hold the Fort.” (“Hold the fort/ For we are coming,/ Union men be strong./ Side by side keep pressing onward,/ Victory will come.”) For the first and only time in the protracted protest, Gerry McGeer gave in. By phone from the Vancouver Yacht Club, he agreed to have the city feed and lodge the fifteen hundred strikers over the weekend. The occupiers emerged from the library in triumph.

The tactic was typical of Slim Evans. He had a genius for maintaining momentum. “You can’t go on marching and singing and begging with tin cans,” he would say. “You’ve got to do something new.” Two weeks later, as the passage of time began to thin ranks, sap morale and cut into public support, Evans hit the strategic mother lode. At a mass meeting called to discuss the future of the faltering strike, someone put forward the idea of taking the protest to Ottawa. Evans seized on the idea. When the proposal was endorsed, the strikers nearly took the roof off the joint with their roars of approval. It was as if a huge jolt of electricity had revitalized their flagging spirits. They had a mission once again.

The ensuing On-to-Ottawa Trek remains one of the defining events of the Depression in Canada. It caught the fancy of the country in a way that not even Slim Evans could have foreseen. The journey came to epitomize everything that was wrong with the federal government’s hard approach to those brought low by forces beyond their control. The public saw it that way too. The farther the young BC trekkers travelled on top of swaying boxcars—many attaching themselves with belts or ropes—in their quest for a fair deal, the more they were embraced by Canadians as doing the right thing.

The idea was mad to begin with, of course. With a mere four days to prepare, little money and scant arrangements along the way, more than a thousand men had to be supplied and kept together for a three-thousand-mile journey to the lair of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett. Certain that it would quickly fall apart, governments and police could barely stifle a yawn when the trek was announced. But the relief camp strikers were charged with excitement by the sheer audacity of the plan. “Suddenly there was a new level of struggle. It was as if everything we had done up to that point was preparing for [this],” said trekker Willis Shaparla. Half a century later, Shaparla, a veteran of the D-Day landing, considered his participation in the On-to-Ottawa Trek the highlight of his life.

Yet no one knew what lay ahead the night of June 3, 1935, as hundreds of men clambered atop a line of CPR freight cars by the Vancouver waterfront and headed off into the darkness. Crowds had gathered to see them off. More than 800 left on the first train, another 200 boarded a later Canadian National Railway freight, and 350 more moved out the next evening.

The trek had a rough beginning. In Kamloops, the strikers’ first stop, civic officials were unfriendly, and many men grumbled over the poor arrangements. At the small mountain community of Golden, however, things turned around. Sooty, begrimed, exhausted and hungry after a chilly night ride through the Selkirk Mountains and smoke-filled Connaught Tunnel, men staggered down from their perches and marched toward a local auto park. “I was so cold, I could have fallen off the roof of the box car,” remembered Red Walsh. As dawn broke, there waiting for them was a bathtub suspended over a fire and a grey-haired woman stirring its contents—a vast beef stew—with a three-foot-long ladle. Other stew-filled washtubs were nearby. “Good morning, boys,” she hailed them. It was a stew the men never forgot. Long tables laden with bread and eggs added to their wonderful breakfast.

On they went to Calgary, passing a handful of relieved provincial police at the BC–Alberta border, who gave them a cheery wave. The swirling, acrid smoke that filled the many Rocky Mountain tunnels blackened faces, stung the eyes and made breathing difficult. But Calgarians cheered from their housetops as the sooty trekkers marched to the city’s exhibition grounds. Thumbing their nose at the city’s refusal to grant them a permit, they raised $1,300 in a tag day. And when authorities denied them temporary assistance, they occupied the provincial relief office until the government gave in.

New recruits arrived on boxcars from Edmonton. One of them was Phil Klein, father of future Alberta premier Ralph Klein. (During a fiftieth-anniversary re-creation of the trek, Ralph Klein, who was mayor at the time, welcomed surviving trekkers to Calgary and formally guaranteed them safe passage through the city. He then invited them to lunch.) Fulminations by politicians that the men were being led by communists cut less and less ice. “To be quite frank, we don’t care very much,” said an editorial in the Calgary Albertan . The public saw the protest as just, and the protesters as disciplined young men who wanted a better deal, not revolution. Before leaving Calgary, they were feted at picnics and flooded with food and clothing. Hundreds gathered to say goodbye.

Back in Ottawa, Bennett was stunned by the trek’s growing popularity. Over five hundred more men had joined the venture since Vancouver. Bennett determined that it must be stopped. He chose Regina. As communities continued to bend over backward to feed and lodge the eighteen hundred men on their overnight stops, the RCMP began drawing up a battle plan. Having learned of Bennett’s plans, the trekkers held a mass meeting attended by three thousand people in Moose Jaw. The mood was defiant. “If they attack us, we are not going to lay down and take it,” warned twenty-four-year-old Matt Young. That determination quickened their departure to Regina on the next evening freight.

The overnight journey was terrible. A violent prairie storm replete with thunder and lightning lashed the men all night. But the strikers maintained their discipline. Arriving just after dawn on June 14, they made their way down from the boxcars, lined up in their divisions and proceeded in good order, four abreast, to the local exhibition grounds. Later that morning, they put on a show for the welcoming citizens of Regina, parading in a long line down Eleventh Avenue. “On to Ottawa” was chalked on the back of many flimsy jackets, and the men chanted, “Where are we going? Ottawa! Who’s going to stop us? Nobody! ”

The RCMP had other ideas. Despite opposition from Premier Jimmy Gardiner and strong backing for the trekkers from the citizens of Regina, the Mounties moved hundreds of reinforcements into the city with the intent of stopping the boxcar cavalcade and arresting the leaders. Bennett leaned on the railways to no longer accommodate the trekkers. They were trespassing on private property, he reminded them. Nevertheless, Evans set June 17 for their departure to Winnipeg, where hundreds more single unemployed men were waiting eagerly to join up.

But Bennett put the trek on hold with a cagey invitation to the leadership committee to meet with him in Ottawa; in the meantime, the government promised the trekkers a week’s worth of meal tickets. Although Bennett’s invitation was clearly a delaying tactic to help the RCMP prepare, Evans felt they had no option but to accept. The meeting was a stage director’s dream. Dressed in their worn, rumpled clothes of the road, Evans and his committee sat opposite the corpulent R.B. Bennett, wearing a swallow-tailed coat and winged collar, with a diamond stick pin in his tie. It quickly degenerated into a bout of schoolyard name-calling. Bennett began by charging that the trekkers’ goal was not work but the overthrow of the government. If he believed that, Evans retorted, Bennett wasn’t fit to be leader “of a Hottentot village.” Furious, the prime minister shot back that Evans was an embezzler of union funds. Evans snapped that Bennett was a liar. “You are not intimidating me one bit.” The meeting came to a quick close. The verbal donnybrook between the two men was headline news across the country, setting the scene for the tragedy that followed.

By the time Evans and the delegation returned to Regina on June 26, the city was full of police with riot sticks. Their ranks included seventy-five Mounties freshly arrived from taking part in a bloody crackdown against striking dock workers in Vancouver. The trekkers were trapped, followed by police wherever they went. Assistant RCMP Commissioner Stuart Wood warned that any citizen assisting the trekkers would be subject to arrest. Donations dried up. Access to the radio airwaves ended. When only a sparse crowd turned out for a Saturday picnic on June 29, Evans realized there was no way forward.

He began to negotiate a resolution with Premier Gardiner, who was furious with Bennett and the RCMP for proceeding with no regard for the wishes of the province. The men were prepared to call off the trek and return west, Evans said, but they would not go to an alternate work camp in Saskatchewan as Bennett insisted. There matters stood on the Dominion Day holiday, July 1. In the circumstances, no one thought much about a rally scheduled that night for the city’s vast Market Square. The resulting Regina Riot remains one of Canada’s most widely known civil disturbances.

At 8:17 p.m., as a modest crowd of fifteen hundred listened to the rally’s first speaker, two loud blasts from a police whistle split the early evening air. Within seconds, police were charging through the terrified crowd, clearing a path to the speakers’ platform by knocking over anyone in their way with truncheons. Willis Shaparla called the sudden whistle and police charge “the most fearful moment of my life.” As people desperately took flight to escape the riot sticks, Evans and co-leader George Black were quickly collared and taken to jail. After a brief lull, the fracas turned into a riot.

The unprovoked attack on a peaceful gathering released an outpouring of bottled-up rage from the trekkers and equally angered citizens. Rocks, bricks and other projectiles rained down on police. A few attacked isolated officers with clubs and other weapons. Plainclothes city detective Charles Millar was struck and killed, his assailants never identified. The battle continued in Regina’s darkened downtown streets. Police advanced with tear gas, billy clubs, gunfire and fierce charges on horseback. Nick Schaack, an unemployed farmhand, received several blows to the head. He died in hospital three months later. Despite their numbers and firepower advantage, police did not manage to secure an edgy calm until 11 p.m. The city’s two hospitals treated more than a hundred victims, including some police and at least a dozen patients with gunshot wounds.

The next morning, outraged by the RCMP onslaught, Premier Gardiner wrested control of the situation from police and the federal government by arranging the strikers’ orderly departure. After their frustrating three-week stay in Regina, trekkers began to register for the trip home. All told, 1,358 men accepted the offer to leave—this time inside the trains and “on the cushions.” Two-thirds were from British Columbia, half from Vancouver. Although falling twenty-six hundred kilometres short of its goal, the On-to-Ottawa Trek, hatched in Vancouver, is remembered today as one of the country’s most inspiring protests. Sixty-six years later, at the age of ninety-two, trekker Harry Linsley told an interviewer, “All we ever wanted was work and wages.”

Two years after the trek ended, a number of participants were fighting in Canada’s Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion as part of the international contingent of volunteers against Franco’s fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Two who died, Peter Neilson and Paddy O’Neil, had been members of the trekkers’ delegation that met with R.B. Bennett in Ottawa.

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The 'on-to-ottawa trek'.

Unemployed men protest government inaction during the Great Depression

The aftermath of the Regina Riot: one protestor and one policeman dead, more than a hundred injured, and the movement’s leaders imprisoned.

Author: The Edmonton Journal

Source: Edmonton Journal July 12, 1935, p1

Relief camp workers riding the rails on their trek to Ottawa in June 1935.

Author: Unknown

Source: Library and Archives Canada, C-029399

Vancouver Mayor Gerry McGeer reads the Riot Act in Victory Square on April 23, 1935.

Source: City of Vancouver Archives, AM54-S14-Vol 9, No2 503-D-1

Police and demonstrators clash at the Regina Riot on July 1, 1935.

Author: McDermid Studio

Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-3622-20

On April 4, 1935, thousands of workers put down their pickaxes, shovels, and other tools and deserted British Columbia’s relief camps, hitching rides on boxcars bound for Vancouver. However, the ultimate destination would be Ottawa.

This wasn’t the first walkout among relief camp workers , but it was the largest. Over five years had passed since the stock market crashed on Black Tuesday, signalling the start of the Great Depression . While the markets in the United States seemed to be recovering, Canadians saw no such progress at home. Instead, the government had herded thousands of jobless men from city streets into rural relief camps , where they were set to hard labour for a paltry wage of 20 cents per day. It was an attempt to hide the problem of poverty rather than address it. 

Even though the camp workers were technically banned from organizing, thousands of them joined the newly-formed Relief Camp Workers’ Union (RCWU). The group — which was affiliated with the Communist Party’s trade union, the Workers’ Unity League (WUL) — decided that one dramatic move would draw attention to their cause: a general strike. On April 4, camp workers from all across Western Canada walked off the job.

Two thousand men converged on Vancouver. They would spend the next two months protesting in the city.

At the time, Canadian politics was splintered. British Columbia’s Liberal government, which had campaigned on promises of “Work and Wages,” was at odds with the Conservative federal government under R.B. “Iron Heel” Bennett. He contended that policing and aid were local responsibilities. The lack of any cohesive and productive action by the government garnered only frustration from its citizenry. When the men arrived in Vancouver, public support was in their corner.

Less than three weeks after the strike started, Vancouver Mayor Gerry McGeer — who had was on a law and order platform — decided that enough was enough. After a large workers’ demonstration on April 23, McGeer read the Riot Act in Victory Square. Later that night, he would have police raid the workers’ headquarters. A violent street battle broke out. Arrests were made.

By June, after months of demonstrations, the protestors were frustrated. They had reached an impasse with the local government, and there was no clear path forward. The men decided they needed to chart a bold, new path, so they decided to take the fight to Ottawa. A grand exodus ensued. On June 3, one thousand men hitched rides on freight cars — a practice called “riding the rod” — to confront the prime minister himself.

At least, that was the plan. Halfway to Ottawa, the strikers stopped in Regina, with only the movement’s leaders carrying on. When they did meet with Bennett, the conversation quickly devolved into insults, and no resolution was found.

The strike leaders returned to Regina with a new plan. They spread the word: On July 1, Dominion Day, there would be a rally in the city’s Market Square. But local authorities found out and devised their own scheme. They wanted to prevent the movement from growing larger than it already was.

On the day of the rally, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people had convened in the square when the RCMP riot squad arrived, armed with clubs. They forcibly shut down the protest in what would become the most violent conflagration of the Great Depression: the Regina Riot. By the end of the day, one constable and one protestor had died. More than a hundred people, mostly locals, were injured. Meanwhile, the movement’s leaders had been arrested, screeching their campaign to a halt.

While Bennett and his law enforcement might have won the battle, he didn’t win the war. Or rather, he didn’t win the election. A few months later, the Conservatives lost power, sunk by the public’s distaste for Bennett’s repressive tactics.

Unfortunately, a change of the guard didn’t result in a swift economic turnaround. There would be more hard days to come in British Columbia and across Canada.

Author: Leah Siegel

• Greater Vancouver Area

1. Belshaw, John Douglas. “The Great Depression.”  Canadian History: Post-Confederation , B.C. Open Textbook Project, opentextbc.ca/postconfederation/chapter/8-5-the-great-depression/. 

2. McCallum, Todd.  Hobohemia and the Crucifixion Machine: Rival Images of a New World in 1930s Vancouver . Athabasca University Press, 2014. 

3. Mickleburgh, Rod.  On the Line: a History of the British Columbia Labour Movement . Harbour Publishing, 2018. 

4. “On to Ottawa Trek.”  On to Ottawa Historical Society , BC Labour Heritage Centre, 2002, www.labourheritagecentre.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Booklet-On-to-Ottawa-web.pdf. 

All Rights Reserved

Canada’s biggest riot – Canada day, 1935

On July 1, 1935 thousands of people were on the streets of Regina, not to mark their country’s birthday, but to support a group of workers who were protesting against high unemployment, income insecurity and unfair working conditions. When the RCMP charged in to break things up, it caused the biggest riot in Canadian history (so far).

The “On To Ottawa Trek” was a worker protest against unfair treatment and government austerity that captured public support, contributed to the defeat of the Conservative federal government of R.B. Bennett later that year, and paved the way to the establishment of a national unemployment insurance plan.

In the 1930s, “ The Great Depression ” had crippled the Canadian economy and resulted in massive unemployment. In response, the Federal Government created “ relief camps ” where thousands of men lived and worked at a rate of twenty cents per day.

By 1935, people had had enough. In April that year, following a two-month protest in Vancouver over the dismal and unfair working conditions in the camps, more than a thousand unemployed workers boarded – or rather jumped on top of – railway box cars in what became to be known as the “ On‑to‑Ottawa Trek .” Their goal: to meet as a group with the Conservative government of the day and demand better conditions and a fairer way to address unemployment.

The Prime Minister eventually agreed to meet, but only with a handful of representatives, not all of the workers. While those representatives travelled to Ottawa, the hundreds of other trekkers “waited” in Regina (they were actually being held in place by the RCMP).

The meeting went badly, with the Prime Minister accusing the trekkers of being radicals leading an insurrection. When the workers’ representatives returned to Regina with news of their meeting, nearly 2000 people joined 300 trekkers as a show of protest and solidarity for workers’ rights.

The police charged the crowd, setting off hours of hand-to-hand fighting throughout the city’s centre. People fought back with sticks and stones while police used tear gas and fired bullets above and into groups of people.

Damage to property was considerable and personal injuries were many; one trekker and a plain clothed policeman died while hundreds of injured local residents and trekkers were taken to hospitals or private homes. The police proceeded to arrest those in hospital, along with over 100 others.

The police claimed 39 injuries in addition to the dead police officer, but denied that any protesters had been killed in the melee. Hospital records were subsequently altered to conceal the actual cause of death.

Later that year, in reaction to public support for a better deal for the unemployed, the federal government passed the   Employment and Social Insurance Act   and the country’s first national unemployment plan.

Eventually, the government was  defeated , and its hastily-crafted law struck down in the courts. But, the bold attempt at reform paved the way for the establishment of a national unemployment insurance program under the new government, led by W.L.M King, in 1940.

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The On-to-Ottawa Trek was a 1935 social movement of unemployed men protesting the dismal conditions in federal relief camps scattered in remote areas across Western Canada . 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 , British Columbia , camp strikers voted to travel east to Ottawa and bring their grievances to the federal government. The Great Depression crippled the Canadian economy and left one in nine citizens on relief. [ 1 ] The relief, however, did not come free; the Bennett Government ordered the Department of National Defense 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 . A walkout was called on April 4, 1935 and about 1600 strikers headed for Vancouver. [ 2 ] The strikers– demands included the provision of adequate first aid equipment in the camps, the extension of the Workmen–s Compensation Act to include camp workers, the repeal of Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada , and that workers in camps be granted the right to vote in federal elections . 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.–

[ edit ] Meeting in Ottawa

The protesters reached Regina, Saskatchewan on June 14 and met with two federal cabinet ministers in the government of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett on June 17. Robert Manion 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.

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

[ edit ] Effects

The events helped to discredit Bennett's Conservative government, and in the 1935 federal election , his party went from holding 134 seats to just 39. It also increased the notoriety of the Communist Party of Canada , 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.

[ edit ] See also

• Great Depression in Canada
• Canadian Cities in the Great Depression
• History of Regina
• Estevan Riot

[ edit ] References

• ^ Zuehlke, Mark (1996). The Gallant Cause: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 . Vancouver: Whitecap Books. ISBN   1-55110-488-1 .  
• ^ Waiser, Bill (2003). All Hell Can't Stop Us: The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot . Calgary: Fifth House.  

[ edit ] 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

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On-to-Ottawa Trek Facts & Worksheets

The year 1935 saw the rise of a social movement known as the on-to-ottawa trek in which a number of workers protested the unjust and poor conditions in federal relief camps established in remote areas throughout western canada., search for worksheets, download the on-to-ottawa trek facts & worksheets.

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Table of Contents

The year 1935 saw the rise of a social movement known as the On-to-Ottawa Trek in which a number of workers protested the unjust and poor conditions in federal relief camps established in remote areas throughout Western Canada. These camp workers were only paid twenty cents per day, which eventually led to a national labour demonstration in April of that year. After two months of protesting in Vancouver , the strikers decided to head east to Ottawa to take their demands directly to the federal government.

See the fact file below for more information on the On-to-Ottawa Trek or alternatively, you can download our 22-page On-to-Ottawa Trek worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

Leading to ottawa.

• In the 1930s, the Great Depression widely affected the economy of Canada , which resulted in the unemployment of more than one-third of the labour force and a sense of public despair.
• In 1932, an estimated 1.8 million Canadians were left on welfare. The lack of unemployment insurance made the situation worse. Employers continued to cut wages and increase work hours without any benefits.
• Moreover, one in nine citizens was dependent on relief that the federal government provided at the time. However, the relief was not free.
• The RB Bennett Government directed the Department of National Defence to set up work camps in isolated areas across Western Canada in which single unemployed men were hired to build roads and similar public works for only twenty cents a day.
• Four years later, approximately 100,000 young Canadians worked and lived in the relief camps, which were managed by the military forces. In addition to the low wages, the workers did not receive proper food or accommodation.
• The poor working conditions in the relief camps eventually led to social unrest. Following this, communist agitators organised the men into the Relief Camp Workers Union (RCWU).
• The camp strikers demanded fair wages, a five-day working week, unemployment insurance, the inclusion of camp workers in the Workers’ Compensation Act, the abolishment of Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada, suffrage, and the removal of the camps’ authority from the army.
• On April 4, 1935, an estimated 1,600 camp inmates went on strike and travelled to Vancouver, British Columbia . They organised large demonstrations, parades, and protests with their slogan “Work and Wages”.
• The gathering in Vancouver lasted for two months through the assistance of labour unions in the city and sympathisers who provided the protesters with food and money.
• This local strike swiftly escalated into a national labour demonstration. Following the rejection of the strikers’ call for federal help, they took their grievances to the capital of the country. They were supported by the public.
• On June 2, 1935, about a thousand unemployed men left Vancouver and boarded CPR freight trains heading east, which would become known as the On-to-Ottawa Trek.
• Arthur “Slim” Evans, a veteran trade union leader, labour activist, former Wobbly, and Communist, led the protesters.
• The Trek passed through the cities and towns of Kamloops, Revelstoke, Golden, Calgary, Medicine Hat, Swift Current, and Moose Jaw. An advance party, which included Regina’s Matt Shaw, scavenged food for the group of unemployed men. The Trekkers spent nights in parks or in baseball fields.
• On June 14, 1935, Prime Minister RB Bennett instructed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to prevent the 2,000 Trekkers from entering Ottawa, fearing that they might ignite a revolution.

REGINA RIOT

• Within two weeks, the Trekkers reached Regina, the capital of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan . They took shelter in barns and show houses at the Regina Exhibition Grounds, with meal tickets for nearby lunch counters and cafes. Regina residents also donated food for the strikers.
• Consequently, federal cabinet ministers Robert Manion and Robert Weir invited an eight-member delegation from the RCWU, including Slim Evans and Doc Savage, to travel to Ottawa and raise their concerns to Prime Minister Bennett himself.
• The meeting invitation, however, came with a condition. The rest of the strikers had to remain in Regina, where the RCMP forces were already established.
• The meeting, which took place on June 22, 1935, only ended in a yelling match after the Tory prime minister accused Evans of extortion and the rest of the group of being radicals. Evans called Bennett a liar.
• On July 1, 1935 (Dominion Day), when the strikers and Regina residents organised a large meeting in the downtown area, the RCMP violently attacked them and arrested the Trek leaders, thus resulting in a riot.
• Hundreds of local residents and strikers were injured, including the death of a Trekker named Nick Shaack. About 120 protesters were arrested. The police, on the other hand, insisted that they had 39 injuries, including the death of an officer, but denied that they killed any of the strikers, and altered hospital records to hide the protesters’ real cause of death.

END OF THE TREK

• The Trek was eventually halted, but the protesters sustained their unity and were able to return to their homes via railway passenger cars.
• In the fall of that year, the Bennett government was overwhelmingly defeated after the general elections. The relief camps were abolished later on.
• The federal government also began to create an unemployment insurance system and provided social assistance to single unemployed citizens.
• Former Trek leaders became involved in a number of post-Depression labour unions, including Doc Savage in the Canadian Seamen’s Union, Harry Linsley in the Packinghouse Workers, and Bob Jackson and George Edwards in the Woodworkers.
• Even though the Trekkers were not able to reach Ottawa, the national demonstration brought significant changes to Canada and helped shape the labour movement in the country. In the following years, the federal government could no longer disregard the exponential rise of unemployment.

On-to-Ottawa Trek Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about the On-to-Ottawa Trek across 22 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use On-to-Ottawa Trek worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about the rise of a social movement known as the On-to-Ottawa Trek in which a number of workers protested the unjust and poor conditions in federal relief camps established in remote areas throughout Western Canada. These camp workers were only paid twenty cents per day, which eventually led to a national labour demonstration in April of that year. After two months of protesting in Vancouver, the strikers decided to head east to Ottawa to take their demands directly to the federal government.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

• On-to-Ottawa Trek Facts
• Locating Ottawa
• Find the Words
• Fill in the Blanks
• Regina Riot
• Notable People
• Quote Analysis
• Primary Source Analysis
• On-to-Ottawa Trek Impact
• Significance of the Strike
• In a Nutshell

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Deachman: How my 89-year-old neighbour, Joe, taught me to enjoy going slow

After getting two new hips, I was frustrated by the pace of recovery. Then I was challenged to a race — walkers and all

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About a month after my double hip replacement surgery in January, I was encouraged by my physiotherapist to take an outdoor walk each day using a four-wheeled walker. It started with just a five-minute outing, with an additional five minutes tacked on with each passing week.

If that doesn’t seem like much, it’s because it isn’t.

Those earliest walks, despite the liberation I felt after being cooped up inside for weeks (and the knowledge that, yes, they were important steps towards my recovery), could also be frustrating. After all, I wasn’t getting anywhere. The nearby Quickie convenience store on Bank Street, only a block and a half from my house, remained off the edge of my map until my seventh week post-op. The fresh-squeezed orange juice from Cedars grocery store, meanwhile, lay a further and agonizing two weeks away.

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And, yes, you’re right; I could, and did, get my son to bring me supplies, while friends and neighbours filled my fridge and pantry with all manner of victuals for which I am most grateful. But there’s a lot to be said for being able to do things on your own time and under your own steam, and those five-minute increments initially felt paltry, like watching a mountain being eroded by wind and rain. My map couldn’t unfold fast enough.

Until I met Joe Falsatti.

Joe and his wife, Emilia, live on my block, on the same side that I do, 14 houses away. They’ve lived there since 1964. I am a newcomer to the neighbourhood, by comparison, arriving with my kit bag just 25 years ago. So, naturally, Joe and I had never, until very recently, spoken to one another.

It was Joe who broke the ice.

“Hey!” he called out as I wobbled by his house on a 10-minute excursion. “Did you steal my walker?”

“No!” I earnestly replied. “Why, did someone take your walker?”

“No,” he reassured me. “I was joking.”

We exchanged names and pleasantries, and the following day I encountered him again, this time as he was out for his daily walk, usually about a 30-minute trek. Almost 90, Joe has a couple of degenerative spinal discs and has been using a walker — his “black Cadillac,” he calls it — for six or seven years. It was on Joe’s seasoned advice that I began walking on the road and not the more perilous sidewalk (more on that in some later column, perhaps). He also good-naturedly challenged me to a race; “I’ll give you a head start,” he promised.

I began looking for Joe when I went on my walks. I discovered he was a baker, learning the trade at Gala Bakery on Rochester Street in Little Italy when he was 17, later taking his talents to Dominion grocery stores. He retired at 58. He and Emilia have three sons and two grandchildren. He drives a Buick. He’s of the vintage that, when he gave me his phone number, he didn’t include the area code; the “730” exchange made it clear enough to anyone who’s lived in Old Ottawa South in the age of landlines.

And, significantly, Joe taught me the value of slowing down.

“If I start at Brewer Park and walk to Bank Street,” he says of the 650-metre trek, “it might take me maybe three-quarters of an hour because I stop and talk to all the people I know and meet. You get to know people, you get a connection.”

The walker certainly helps. Before he started using one, Joe says conversations were much less likely to occur. But the more measured pace dictated by a walker, not to mention the questions that the device itself might prompt, helps encourage neighbourly communication. It’s not unlike how walking a dog can create a friendly opening line of conversation.

“If you just walked by, we might say, ‘Hi,’ and that’s it,” he says. “But we both had the Cadillacs, so we got to know one another.”

I’ve similarly noticed it with other neighbours. For years, I’ve spoken in passing with Michelle, who lives on the next block, but only learned when I hit the 15-minute mark of my rehab that the Australian Shepherd she routinely exercises is named Luna and that Michelle has been delivering the community paper, The OSCAR, for as long as I’ve lived here. She started doing it, she told me, as a way to connect her children to the neighbourhood.

It’s long been a lament of urban living that neighbours rarely know one another anymore, save for fleeting nods or waves while out shovelling snow or raking leaves. Joe has demonstrated how simply being a little more deliberate can change that.

For better and worse, though, my days with the walker are numbered. It’s time to wean off of it, my physiotherapist has advised, first in favour of a cane, and soon after that nothing.

And then what? I don’t think I’ll get a dog; my cat would kill me if I did. Instead, I’ll try to make a habit of walking slowly, saying hello, and asking neighbours if they stole my walker.

Thanks, Joe.

Born in Fort William, Ont., a city that no longer appears on maps,  Bruce Deachman has called Ottawa home for most of his life. As a columnist and reporter with the Citizen, he works at keeping Ottawa on the map. You can reach him at  [email protected] .

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EV Charging

Ev charging stations, illinois to spend $25.1 million on public ev charging infrastructure.

Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Director John J. Kim has announced plans to spend more than $25 million on new EV charging infrastructure under the Driving a Cleaner Illinois program.

That $25.1 million of Illinois EPA money ($25,152,259.44, to be exact) is being awarded to 20 applicants, and will eventually fund 643 new Direct Current Fast Charging ( DCFC ) ports at 141 locations throughout the state. These awards come in addition to $12.6 million the Illinois EPA awarded in Volkswagen Settlement funding (read: Dieselgate penalties ) for more than 300 new EV fast charging ports in 2023.

“Through these grants, Illinois will increase the number of fast charging ports by over 100 percent, resulting in nearly 1,000 more fast charging ports available for Illinois’ EV motorists and visitors,” said Director Kim. “This is significant progress in building out EV charging infrastructure throughout Illinois, with more opportunities on the way.”

The money is geared towards putting DCFC charging stations at publicly accessible locations like malls, grocery stores, gas stations, and hotels (etc.). Additional “points” (translation: funds) were awarded to projects in Equity Investment Eligible Communities.

“In Illinois, we’re strategically turning our vision for a clean energy future into a reality,” said Governor JB Pritzker . “Thanks to recent grant awards, my administration will double the number of publicly available fast charging ports — putting us one step closer to our goal of reaching 100% clean energy by 2050 .”

The complete list of award winners is listed, below.

Electrek’s Take

More EV charging infrastructure is undoubtedly a good thing, and these funds are going to help encourage business and public sector entities in the state to keep doing the right thing here and invest in the future of transportation.

It’s also worth noting that these Illinois EPA funds can “stack” with similar Make-Ready EV charging infrastructure rebate programs from ComEd, a utility company that provides service in northern Illinois. The first phase of the ComEd rebate program has a $77 million budget over two years .

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

I’ve been in and around the auto industry since the 90s, and have written for a number of well-known outlets like CleanTechnica, the Truth About Cars, Popular Mechanics, and more. You can catch me on The Heavy Equipment Podcast with Mike Switzer, the AutoHub Show with Ian and Jeff, or chasing my kids around Oak Park, IL.

What’s it like for an NHL team to relocate? Former Thrasher says ‘first emotion was anger’

Chris Thorburn remembers the exact moment when he learned that he and his young family would be relocating from Atlanta to Winnipeg.

In the spring of 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers forward was getting ready to undertake a significant backyard renovation when his cellphone rang.

“We were putting a pool in our backyard in Atlanta. The excavator was in the backyard about to dig the hole for the pool and I got a call from Kevin Cheveldayoff welcoming me to Winnipeg,” says Thorburn.

Rumors about a potential sale and relocation for the Thrashers had been swirling for months. And even when the finality sank in, there were conflicted feelings for Thorburn and his family.

Everything we know about the Coyotes' move to Utah: What went wrong? Will team name change?

“It was an array of emotions, to say the least,” says Thorburn. “And the first emotion was anger.”

Thorburn was one of the most outspoken advocates for keeping the Thrashers in Atlanta. In the spring of 2011, he attended public rallies to generate support for the team. Thorburn often gave passionate interviews to local media, pleading for league officials to reconsider the idea of moving the Thrashers out of Atlanta.

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“Just for owners to turn their backs on you, it kind of makes you mad. Obviously, we don’t know every aspect of the deal and where they’re coming from,” Thorburn told the local FOX news affiliate on May 23, 2011. “From everything we’ve heard, from rumors that we’ve heard, it’s discouraging just knowing that they’re trying to dump us. That makes a guy mad.”

But Thorburn’s anger would soon morph into resignation and acceptance. And then his focus shifted to the logistical side of the relocation, because he and his wife, Sara, had a young son.

“We had one child at the time. He was too young for school, so it was a bit easier to transition,” says Thorburn.

One of the first things the couple realized was that a significant climate shift was on the horizon. They would be trading the warm Georgia breeze for bitterly cold Manitoba nights, where the windchill could plunge the temperature to minus-40 Fahrenheit.

“We had to call our parents and get all our winter stuff out of storage,” Thorburn said with a laugh. “We didn’t need that in Atlanta.”

The NHL collective bargaining agreement calls for “transferred players” — either via trade, waivers, expansion or team relocation — to have reimbursement for reasonable moving expenses they incur. This includes a round-trip ticket for the player and spouse to scout out potential homes or schools in the new city.

The Jets’ front office connected the Thorburns with a real-estate agent to start the process of finding a new place in Winnipeg. The team picked up the expenses of moving their possessions from Atlanta to Winnipeg and, from a logistical standpoint, Thorburn says the move itself was relatively painless.

When Thorburn read the suggestion that Coyotes players might be offered a group visit to Salt Lake City to scout out their new NHL home, he thought that was a smart idea. That was not something on the table for Thrashers players in the summer of 2011.

“That seems like a huge perk for the players. At least going into the summer, they can see what they’re getting into,” says Thorburn. “The Thrashers players, we didn’t all go to Winnipeg like that. So if someone went to Winnipeg that summer, we would check in with him and see how his trip was.”

Thorburn says the phenomenon of being relocated is unique and can serve as a bonding moment. When a player gets traded, they can feel a sense of awkwardness and isolation as they join a new group. But with relocation, it’s often a group of 15 to 20 players and some staff members who are all making the same leap.

“You’re all going as a group and you’re all experiencing it together,” says Thorburn. “For the Coyotes, it might be able to galvanize the group.”

Coyotes say goodbye, close chapter in Arizona before relocation

The difficult thing is that not all the staff come along for the relocation. In the case of the Thrashers, the new ownership group had their own equipment and training staff in mind for the Jets , meaning the majority of Thrashers staff were left behind in Atlanta. Thorburn is hopeful the Salt Lake group will consider bringing Coyotes support staff along to Utah.

“The trainers are the backbone. Every player will tell you that and I hope they take care of them,” says Thorburn. “I hope they consider moving with the players because they are family and they play a huge part in our careers.”

Having been through relocation himself, Thorburn is keenly observing the Coyotes storyline this month. He understands many of the players have a strong sentimental tie to Arizona, much like he did with Atlanta. His advice for the Coyotes players who are headed to Salt Lake City is to embrace the idea of starting a new chapter, because they might end up falling in love with Utah.

“Have an open mind,” says Thorburn. “I loved Atlanta, but I was naive to how good the experience was in Winnipeg. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

On May 31, 2011, Gary Bettman sat at a table next to Mark Chipman and David Thomson to announce the return of the NHL to Manitoba after a 15-year hiatus.

“It’s nice to be back in Winnipeg after all these years,” Bettman said to open his portion of the press conference , a remark that drew a hearty round of applause.

It was a celebratory moment, filled with smiles and cheers.

At that exact same moment — 1,500 miles to the south — there was a much more somber gathering on the practice court of the Atlanta Hawks. The Thrashers called an all-hands staff meeting to finally update employees about the worst-kept secret in the industry. Team president Don Waddell and minority owner Bruce Levenson were on hand to provide an update.

Ben Wright, who oversaw the Thrashers’ social media and website content, was in attendance for the grim meeting on the hardwood basketball court.

“They just told us the team is being sold and it’s pending the board of governor’s approval,” recalls Wright. “In the meantime, they told us to ‘keep doing what you do. There will be decisions on what happens.'”

It was the first time Thrashers management directly acknowledged the situation with staff members. As rumors swirled for weeks, team employees were kept in the dark. In May of 2011, the Globe and Mail reported the Thrashers were on the verge of being sold and relocated to Winnipeg. Even that report didn’t elicit any acknowledgment from Thrashers ownership or management.

“We were constantly told to ignore it, and they would tell us if there was something to worry about,” Wright says of the rumors leading up to the sale. “And if you have a team meeting with all the employees, someone is going to leak it. So I understand that.”

There were three weeks of uncertainty in June of 2011 for Thrashers employees, as the final sale of the team was pending NHL board of governors approval. Like many employees, Wright was given the freedom to search for other employment opportunities while he was at work.

But that all came to a crashing halt on June 21, 2011. Within an hour of the NHL board of governors granting approval of the sale and transfer to Winnipeg, Thrashers employees were being summoned into meetings with human resources members to discuss their fate.

Why Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith is hellbent on bringing an NHL team to Salt Lake City

Some employees would be retained, working exclusively for the NBA ’s Atlanta Hawks. But there was a redundancy factor, as many jobs held by Thrashers employees in sales, marketing and communication, were already occupied or shared by somebody on the basketball side. And the only Thrashers employees who were offered an opportunity to relocate to Winnipeg — outside of the players — were a handful of members of the hockey operations department. That meant dozens of Thrashers staff were left unemployed once the relocation was finalized.

Wright believes a similar situation may play out for Coyotes front-office employees as they prepare to relocate to Salt Lake City. The Utah Jazz have an existing infrastructure in place for marketing, sales and other departments that they can use to help launch the NHL team.

“I can’t imagine the Jazz saying to Coyotes staff, ‘Anybody who wants to come to Utah, come and join us,'” says Wright. “The Jazz know their people, they know their process. I don’t imagine anybody from marketing, legal, sales or departments like that will be going.”

Wright recently reached out to the social media manager for the Arizona Coyotes to offer some helpful advice. Wright suggested that Coyotes staff should immediately save as much work as possible from their website because it could be shuttered with no advance warning. Wright — who worked six seasons with the Thrashers — was unable to build a portfolio of stories, interviews and content that he created because everything vanished in a snap of a finger.

“I expected to run things as normal until the end, but without any notice to me, the Thrashers’ Twitter account went dark. It just disappeared,” says Wright. “The team website became a landing page that directed people to Phillips Arena.”

When Wright met with a human resources official on June 21, 2011, the meeting was swift and orderly. He received two weeks of pay for each year he was a full-time employee of the Thrashers. There was no prolonged negotiation or conversation.

“I just told them, ‘Tell me what I need to sign,'” says Wright. “Then I turned in my phone and that was it.”

Wright says he did have one final request after signing his termination papers. He wanted to eat one last lunch with fellow employees in the Thrashers’ staff room. As he was enjoying his meal, however, a different human resources official quickly intervened.

“He said to me, ‘Ben, you’ve already signed your papers. I need you to leave the building immediately. And if you’re not OK with that, I’ll get someone over here,'” recalls Wright.

Startled, Wright had no choice but to exit the building for a final time.

“But a different HR person saw what happened to me and she felt bad,” says Wright. “So she handed me an autographed team stick on my way out of the building.”

The Atlanta Thrashers played their final game on April 10, 2011, against the Pittsburgh Penguins .

As Dan Kamal wrapped up his broadcast from the home radio booth following a 5-2 Thrashers loss that evening, he did not consider it would be the final NHL game he would be calling from Philips Arena.

“I was trying to block it out. I still had a sense of hope after that game. I don’t remember being devastated that it was a done deal,” says Kamal. “But as it turned it, it was already almost done.”

Kamal served as the play-by-play voice on radio for all 11 seasons of Atlanta Thrashers hockey, working alongside analysts Billy Jaffe and Jeff Odgers. But when the team relocated in the summer of 2011, Kamal was not offered an opportunity to continue his role in Winnipeg.

This is not always the case when it comes to broadcasters. When the Winnipeg Jets moved relocated to Phoenix in 1996, play-by-play man Curt Keilback made the trek with the team, continuing to serve as the home broadcaster. As Kamal monitors the situation with the Coyotes, he is hopeful their broadcasters will have a chance to relocate with the team like Keilback did nearly 30 years ago.

This season, the Coyotes television broadcast team consisted of play-by-play man Matt McConnell, analyst Tyson Nash and rink-side host Todd Walsh. Bob Heethuis and Lyndsey Fry handled the play-by-play and analyst duties on radio.

“I want them to land wherever they’d like to land,” says Kamal. “If the Arizona broadcasters want to go to Utah, I hope they’re given an opportunity.”

Why an Atlanta NHL team could succeed if given a third chance

Kamal wanted to the opportunity to continue his role with Jets, but says he was facing too many obstacles to transfer from Atlanta to Winnipeg.

“I would have gone anywhere the Thrashers relocated if the new ownership wanted to keep me on as the radio broadcaster,” says Kamal. “The hurdle for us was, this was over the border. And they already had a crew from the AHL franchise.”

Still, in the Jets’ inaugural season in 2011-12, Kamal did manage to have a role with the radio broadcasts — albeit not from the broadcast booth. The radio rights in that first season were held by AM station CJOB, and they reached out to Kamal to serve as a reporter that season. Kamal would file pre- and post-game reports from Jets road games in 2011-12. Sometimes he would do hits into the broadcast from Atlanta.

“It was obviously bittersweet. But CJOB wanted to tap into that knowledge of mine from following the team since 1999,” says Kamal. “It made the goodbye a little bit longer for me.”

Kamal worked a couple more seasons as a television host for Columbus Blue Jackets games, before leaving the NHL broadcasting world entirely. Still, he holds onto fond memories from his time with the Thrashers, including capturing a Southeast Division championship and making their only playoff appearance in 2006-07. Kamal steadfastly believes Atlanta deserves another chance to host an NHL franchise, believing their problems were rooted in complicated ownership issues — rather than a lack of fan interest.

“This is a good fan base in Atlanta. I hope people respect what Atlanta is and what it can be,” says Kamal. “If they get another chance, it will be an amazingly successful NHL franchise.”

(Photo of former Atlanta Thrashers forward Chris Thorburn: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)

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Ian Mendes is a senior writer covering the NHL. Prior to joining The Athletic in 2021, he spent seven years as an afternoon talk show host for TSN 1200 in Ottawa and as a contributing writer for TSN.ca. He also worked as a television reporter and host with Rogers Sportsnet for 12 years and has served as a feature columnist for both The Ottawa Citizen and Today’s Parent magazine. Follow Ian on Twitter @ ian_mendes