The Great Depression: 1929-1939 by Pierre Berton

Author:Pierre Berton [Berton, Pierre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Americas, Canada
ISBN: 9780307374868
Google: vuVOyizWolgC
Amazon: B004HW6GQY
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Published: 2012-02-20T23:00:00+00:00

1935

1

Bennett’s New Deal

2

Speed-up at Eaton’s

3

The tin canners

4

On to Ottawa

5

The Regina Riot

6

Changing the guard

1

Bennett’s New Deal

Nineteen thirty-five was the watershed year of the Depression. It marked a political divide: Mackenzie King’s Liberals took power as R.B. Bennett’s Conservatives faded into the background. It was also an economic turning point: at last Canada got the badly needed central bank that would eventually enable the federal government to exercise stabilizing control over the economy. There were other beginnings and endings. This was the last full year of the reign of George V, whose Silver Jubilee was celebrated by a chain of bonfires blazing from Victoria to Charlottetown. It was also the last year in office for Lord Bessborough, the aristocratically stuffy governor general, soon to be replaced by a commoner, the Scottish adventure and thriller writer John Buchan. But a commoner could not yet represent the King, and so Buchan would become an instant peer before taking up his vice-regal duties as Lord Tweedsmuir.

Some of the worst excesses of the Depression were about to end. The infamous Section 98 of the Criminal Code would be invoked for the last time. And 1935 was the last year of the relief camps, which had become a symbol of the government’s lack of concern for the unemployed. By spring, the rebellious spirit bred in the so-called slave camps would explode into a full-scale revolt that would keep the West in turmoil until July.

With his term of office coming to its legal end – he had waited almost to the last hour before considering an election – R.B. Bennett realized he must do something spectacular if he were to remain in office. But few of his colleagues knew just how spectacular until the second day of the New Year, when he launched into a series of five half-hour broadcasts that confounded and bewildered the nation.

His opponents (and, indeed, some of his supporters) talked of a deathbed repentance – meaning a political deathbed – and as it turned out, they weren’t far wrong. Others were reminded of the sudden conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Certainly, Bennett’s broadcasts were a revelation to members of his own Cabinet, none of whom had expected anything of the sort. He had not so much as whispered to anyone, except his brother-in-law William Herridge, that he intended to perform a political right about-turn (or, more properly, a left about-turn) and offer Canadians a New Deal patterned after that of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The five broadcasts were carried by a network of thirty-eight stations between January 2 and January 11, and the air time was paid for by Bennett himself. In them, the Prime Minister hurled a series of thunderbolts that excited some, shocked others, and surprised all. One wonders why; clues to his intentions had been apparent the previous month.

The sonorous voice that spoke to Canadians in the first broadcast was Bennett’s, but the words were largely those of Bill Herridge, whose Washington legation served as an open house to the architects and engineers of the Roosevelt New Deal.

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