The Effect of the Depression on Canadian Politics, 1929–32

Abstract

The war and the ensuing economic depression aroused divisive forces in Canadian life which only occasionally lie dormant–the forces of race, religion, occupation, and section. No patriotic speech delivered in English-speaking Canada from 1917 to 1922 was complete without a ringing declaration that the war had made Canada a nation. Actually, by the time of the conscription election of 1917, the war had made Canada two nations, one nation speaking English, the other speaking French. Nor did the English-speaking nation long remain united. The Ontario farmer had voted for conscription on the understanding that his sons would not be conscripted. His sons were conscripted, and the protests of his farm organization were met with contempt and derision. In revenge, he organized an agrarian political party. In western Canada, the causes which led the farm movement to enter politics were more deep-rooted than the mere emotionalism of Ontario, and consequently more obscure. The reciprocity campaigns of 1910 and 1911 had shown the farm movement its strength; the break of western Liberalism with Laurier in 1917 had laid the foundations of a third party; and the post-war depression provided the movement with its impetus and its objectives. The same depression strengthened, of course, the farm movement in Ontario and the nascent Labor movement in English-speaking Canada.