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Great depression in Canada

The Great Depression in
Toronto is perhaps best explored
-- in fictional terms, at least -- by
Hugh Garner in his classic novel,
Cabbagetown. It's
semi-autobiographical, as
Garner included some of his own
life experiences of the 1930s. He
lived on Wascana Avenue, in the
area he describes as
Cabbagetown, now Regent Park
and part of Corktown, then a
primarily working-class
neighbourhood. His work is one
of the most enduring portrayals
of that decade in Canadian
literature, and the upcoming
anniversary of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 led me to think again about Garner and the 1930s in Toronto's history.

At the start of the Great

Depression, Ken Tilling,
the protagonist, is sixteen
years of age, having left
high school seven months
earlier in order to find a
job. His struggles
throughout the 1930s,
marked by brief periods of
unrewarding employment,
the eventual "riding the
rails," and, of course, lack
of work, coupled with
difficult circumstances in
his life, are characteristic
of many experiences of
working-class males
during the years following
the financial crisis.
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In Toronto Since 1918: An
Illustrated History, James
Lemon provides some
gruelling statistics from
the 1930s: in 1931, 17% of
Torontonians were
unemployed. Two years
later, the census reported
that 30% were not able to
find work, and in 1935,
25% of the population in
Toronto and the suburbs
were on relief.

Single unskilled drifters,

like Ken, were the worst
affected by the Depression.
For Cabbagetowners, the
factories located close to
their neighbourhood, such as Heintzman & Co., were the main sources of employment. One of the reasons for high
unemployment among the unskilled workers was due to the fact that the value of products fell by half in 1933. The same year,
wages dropped to 60% of their levels in 1929.

Women employed at garment production factories like Eaton's, for example, were paid per each article they made, at the
rate of $12.50 a week, as the minimum wage was established in the 1920s. They were forced to work faster, and their pace
was measured by stop watches. They would be fired for failing to reach the expected production level.

At the same time, the

1930s offered better
employment opportunities
for women then previous
decades, as Katrina Srigley
suggests in her book,
Breadwinning Daughters:
Young Working Women in
a Depression Era City,
1929-1939. Although they
often worked in
female-dominated
occupations, as servants,
secretaries, factory
workers, teachers, and nurses, in many families women became the primary breadwinners. Despite such high expectations
of them, they often enjoyed their sense of independence and of economic responsibility.
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Construction slowed down drastically. After 1931, no commercial or industrial building were erected. One notable example,
Eaton's College Street (now known as College Park), was originally planned as a 38-storey skyscraper, but the new reality
scaled down the project. Only residential construction was flourishing, even though not a significant number of new houses
were built. In the late 1930s, numerous apartment buildings were constructed, with the effect that by 1940 there were 60%
more units than in the start of the 1930s.

To prevent further
unemployment, the city
created the Civic
Employment Office and
Central Bureau for
Unemployment Relief in
1930, and in 1932, the
newly established Public
Welfare Department was
finding jobs for the
unemployed through relief
work.

The costs of the

Depression were personal
as well. As Garner relates,
many men, as the main
providers in their families,
felt ashamed for not being
able to support their wives
and children, which often
led to conflicts between
the spouses. Children born
to unmarried women were
also a source of arguments,
and the author states,
many young people
indulged in one another
simply because they had
nothing else to do.
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Housing became a
problematic issue, and
young people delayed
leaving their family home.
The number of marriages
fell by 40%, and the birth
rate along with it. The
roots of the urban renewal
scheme in Cabbagetown,
of which 90% was razed to
the ground and
rechristened as Regent
Park Housing Project in
the 1950s, can be traced to
the 1930s concerns over
slum conditions in
Garner's neighbourhood.
The Bruce Report, authored by Harry Cassidy and Eric Arthur, two social reformers, exposed the deplorable conditions in
which 2,000 families lived. They proposed to replace the existing housing stock with publicly funded housing, based on the
garden city model. This proposal failed, but the city helped to finance renovations in some of the homes between 1936 and
1939.

Anti-Semitism was on the

rise during the decade in
Toronto. On August 16,
1933, an event regarded as
the most violent ethnic
clash in the history of the
city took place in Christie
Pitts, then known as
Willowvale Park, following
a playoff game for the
Toronto junior softball
championship. Nobody
was killed, but a fight
involving baseball bats
and irons bars, lasted five
hours, taking over the
neighbouring streets. A
plaque commemorating
the event was placed in the park by Heritage Toronto in 2008, seventy-five years after the riot.