The Causes Of Canada In Canada During The Great Depression

Canada in the 1930s hit a difficult time as the Great Depression affected Canada almost as equally as it did the United States of America. As the stock market crashed in October of 1929 in New York, the effect of it was felt across all North America as more then one-quarter of Canadians were out of work. Throughout the ten years of the depression, the way in which it most affected Canadians was through unemployment which led many into poverty. Typically, it was ideal for the man to achieve a high enough wage that he could support his wife and children, and it was tradition for women to take on the responsible role of caring for the children and managing the household, and the idea of keeping the family wage was hard to maintain when the Great …show more content…
For the people in urban areas, the absence of unemployment insurance meant that people who were unemployed or did not receive much work had to exhaust all possible means of what they already had. Families often were trying to make ends meet, living pay check to pay check. Married women who could not or did not want to work outside of the home usually used their domestic duties as a way to bring in whatever extra money they could through means of room and board, doing others’ laundry, and babysitting children. In Quebec, women handled the family budget, and gave an allowance to the man which was usually expected. Food was an important basic need that had to be met on a daily basis as “to want for food, was the worst possible thing…” and clothing was not as important, often in last place in terms of necessity. As a way to save money, children began to wear second hand clothing or their mothers would make them clothes instead of buying new clothing items from stores. Women who stayed at home also dressed in cheap clothing as they often did not leave the house and did not need to look as presentable as their husbands did. As it was hard enough to keep a small family eating, many families decided to use contraception to stop having children at this time to save …show more content…
Unemployed Canadian citizens wrote thousands of letters to the Canadian government looking for a job or any help that the government could give, but many of their pleas went unanswered. At the beginning of the Depression, social welfare programs were becoming more widely used, but in order to qualify, “the unemployed had to be completely destitute and were forced to forfeit cars, radios, phones, and liquor permits”. In response to this, Ontario citizens wrote to the premier with criticisms and complaints of the government, with some women even protesting the government and writing letters themselves as they were the ones who had to budget and save during this hard time. In these letters, women expressed how they wanted jobs for their husbands and aid for their children. The actions of these women demonstrated that they did not see themselves as victims, but this was a way to cope with having to save money where they could. As unemployment was a national problem, the Canadian government saw that it should be a provincial and local issue causing the welfare system to be inadequate. As well, many families did not like the idea of being on welfare or had a hard time accepting charity because then they would be seen as less in the eyes of society. This caused many women to stretch out the wages even further. Debt was also becoming more familiar at this unfortunate time and people were