Scott W. See. The History of Canada. Second Edition

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issues persisted as workers and farmers struggled to achieve rights

and gain protection from workplace abuses. Many sectors of the

economy flourished during the 1920s; others remained in the

doldrums. The two main political parties experienced important

leadership changes, while other parties formed to represent the

interests of groups that had become disillusioned with the Con-

servatives and Liberals. The economic and social divisions between

the regions appeared more sharply defined than during the war.

Applying the classic characterization of “roaring” to describe Canada

in the 1920s would be misleading. Yet much evidence suggests that

the decade was a strong and progressive one for Canadian national

development. Interestingly, the era’s ambiguities are illustrated

perfectly in the behavior of its dominant political leader: William

Lyon Mackenzie King.

Postwar Political Themes

The immediate postwar era brought a watershed in political leadership

for both of the traditional parties, as well as a favorable climate for

constructing alternative parties. Robert Borden, exhausted and in

poor health, turned over the leadership of the Union government

to one of his cabinet members, the intelligent and prickly Arthur

Meighen. In the election of 1921 Meighen’s party, renamed the

Conservatives, met a crushing defeat. Even the newly created

Progressive party sent more representatives to Ottawa than did the

Conservatives.

The Liberals mounted a victory in 1921 behind the leadership of

Mackenzie King, a party stalwart who had replaced Laurier when he

died in 1919. An effective compromiser, the grandson of the rebel

William Lyon Mackenzie would miraculously dominate Canadian

politics for the better part of three decades. King’s life has been

heavily dissected, thanks primarily to his extensive personal journals,

yet he remains an enigmatic historical figure. Given to spiritualism

and receiving guidance from the afterlife, including his deceased

mother, King was poorly understood by Canadians in his own times.

His political survival skills, however, are in no doubt.

King’s political scheme was frustratingly elusive for both con-

temporaries and historians who try to understand his uncanny

130 Canada in the Twenties: Roaring or Whimpering?

ability to remain in power. Moderation, sprinkled liberally with

doses of obfuscation, seemed to be his watchwords. King deserves

full credit, however, for his ability to retain the confidence of

francophone voters. He regularly consulted his key Quebec political

confidant, Ernest Lapointe, who held various cabinet positions until

his death in 1941. The most identifiable Liberal programs of the

1920s were modest tariff reductions, the pursuit of an old age pension

system, and increasing Canada’s ability to act autonomously within

the context of the British Empire.

The Liberals shifted their position to the left after the advent of the

Progressive party, led by Thomas Alexander Crerar. The Progressives

enjoyed a tremendous appeal in the West and Ontario among farmers

and laborers. Their program, called the New National Policy,

envisioned the active use of government to forward socialistic causes.

These included lower tariffs, public ownership of utilities and

railroads, and more direct democracy through the frequent use of

referendums. One of King’s initial success stories as prime minister

was to lure many of the Progressives back to the Liberal party. By

advocating tariff revisions, King effectively coopted the most power-

ful and unifying element of the Progressive party’s plan.

In the wake of the election of 1925, by most accounts one of the

least stimulating in the country’s history, came political and

constitutional crises that had far-reaching implications. With only

modest accomplishments to celebrate, the Liberals barely lost to the

Conservatives under Arthur Meighen. According to precedent, the

Conservatives should have had the opportunity to form a govern-

ment. Instead, the wily Mackenzie King orchestrated a series of

parliamentary maneuvers to keep the Liberals in power with the help

of the Progressives. This precipitated a convoluted and at times

bizarre tussle between King and the popular governor general, Lord

Byng. Byng’s opposition to King’s tactics, as well as the latter’s desire

to avoid a newly exposed scandal in his government, led to a

dissolution of Parliament. Although Meighen had been prime

minister for a brief period, Canadian voters were forced to return

to the polls in 1926. King campaigned on the issue that the British-

appointed Byng had overstepped his bounds and was trying to drag

Canada back into colonial status. The Conservatives tried unsuccess-

fully to target the campaign on the scandal and King’s dubious

political behavior. The Liberals reversed their political fortunes in less

Canada in the Twenties: Roaring or Whimpering? 131

than one year as they reclaimed control of the House of Commons

in 1926, in large part because King had masterfully turned the

event into a referendum on greater Canadian independence from

Great Britain.

Temperance

A temperance movement that advocated the total or partial abstinence

of alcoholic beverages, which had been growing during the nineteenth

century, achieved a measure of success during and following World

War I. Groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union

lobbied to have legislation passed that would control the manufactur-

ing and transportation of alcoholic products. A mixture of factors

drove the prohibitionists, including urban problems, religion, and the

perception that certain immigrant groups, such as the Irish and the

Germans, abused alcoholic beverages. Motivated by patriotic messages

that grains should be used for the war effort rather than in creating

alcoholic beverages, all of the provinces, with the exception of Quebec,

prohibited the sale of alcohol during the war. The federal government

prohibited the manufacture, sale, and importation of alcohol in 1918,

a measure that barely outlasted the war. By the 1920s the federal

government and most of the provinces had abandoned their brief

experiment with prohibition. Canada’s production of alcoholic

beverages continued apace in the 1920s, driven largely by a booming

illegal trade to a United States that was engaged in the “noble

experiment” of prohibition. The Bronfman family, for example,

parlayed their Seagram Company into the world’s greatest distillers

largely by slaking a prodigious American thirst. Although Canada’s

prohibition experiment was short-lived, it illustrated a growing belief

that government should be used to control the social behavior of

individuals.

Workers and the Economy

Tensions among laborers and farmers had been building in Canada

since the nineteenth century. Canadian workers echoed concerns

that reached across national boundaries as industrial capitalism

132 Workers and the Economy

became entrenched in the Western world. Factories were typically

dangerous and unhealthy places. Employees in the staples industries

and manual laborers toiled long hours for low wages without health

protections or benefits. Nineteenth-century labor organizations,

such as the Knights of Labor, aggressively pursued the ideal of an

eight-hour workday, legislation to protect workers’ health and

improve work environments, and the termination of child labor.

While the Knights of Labor appealed to semiskilled and unskilled

labor, various Trades and Labor Congress unions sought the

support of more skilled workers. By the early twentieth century,

the Trades and Labor organizations had been coupled with the

powerful American Federation of Labor (AFL). Through the 1910s

various labor organizations, ranging from the more conservative

AFL to the radical unionists of the Industrial Workers of the World,

known as the Wobblies, strove to draw workers into their ranks.

Thousands of strikes erupted before and during the war, yet the

federal and provincial governments were reluctant to pass mean-

ingful legislation to protect the rights of workers. Laurier ’s

government did create the Department of Labour and pass the

Industrial Disputes Investigation Act in 1907, yet the statute

essentially favored businesses.

Various labor struggles cropped up in the postwar era, thereby

illustrating the complex labor-capital issues of the era. General

inflation, the favored treatment of manufacturers, and rising

unemployment led to a rash of strikes. During the most dramatic

labor action, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, thousands of

workers effectively shut down the city’s services for weeks. Alarmed

citizens, mindful of recent events that had transpired in Russia,

incorrectly branded the general strike a pro-Bolshevik uprising. When

the federal government intervened and the strike leaders were

arrested, a violent confrontation broke out between the Royal

North-West Mounted Police and protesting workers. The strike’s

collapse effectively undermined the recently formed One Big Union, a

socialist-inspired movement of workers. Dramatic clashes, particu-

larly in coal-producing regions such as Nova Scotia, continued in the

1920s, a reminder that deep class divisions existed in Canada.

Although their efforts lacked some of the high drama and

bloodshed of the labor protests, farmers pursued similar agendas

during the postwar era. With the perennial issue of tariffs weighing

Workers and the Economy 133

heavily on their minds and a downturn in the demand for the

country’s grain as the war came to an end, Canadian farmers sought

relief in the political arena. Farmers’ parties emerged in Ontario and

the prairies. The Progressive party also drew heavy support from

farmers for its goal of lowering the tariffs.

Sectors of the Canadian economy boomed in the 1920s, assisted

directly and indirectly by provincial and federal governments that

were eager to facilitate the country’s expansion. Wheat production

soared as the decade progressed, but competition with other grain-

producing countries intensified as well. The paper and pulp industry,

dominated by a few giant corporations, led the word in exports by the

late 1920s. Spurred by improved hydroelectric production, Canada

developed consumer industries and increased its capabilities to

extract mineral resources such as nickel. The automobile industry

burgeoned, as did the development of roads and services needed to

serve an increasingly mobile society. Large chain stores, such as

Eaton’s, carried the most modern consumer goods, appliances, and

fashions. The reliance on the export market to sustain the country’s

economy, particularly in the primary sectors of agricultural, mining,

and timber products, would deliver a devastating blow to Canada

when the Great Depression hit. But for much of the decade, a robust

economy dominated. Indeed, the country crossed an important

statistical threshold in the 1920s when its economy became more

industrial than agricultural in total output and production.

Canadian Culture in the 1920s

Canada also became a nation in which more of its people lived in

larger towns and cities than in rural settings during the 1920s. Its

culture in the postwar era reflected a growing sense of national self-

definition, often anchored to the cities, but just as typically embracing

the country’s rugged terrain and the grittiness of the Canadian

peoples. Writers, editors, artists, radio employees, academics, and

musicians combined to create a Canadian-defined culture. While

some focused more on regions, such as Quebec or the Far North,

many attempted to develop a sense of collective identity. Formed in

the 1920s after the death of artist Tom Thomson, a collection of

134 Canadian Culture in the 1920s

painters known as the Group of Seven created landscapes that have

become some of the most recognizable paintings ever produced in

Canada. Journals, both academic and popular, carved out respectable

followings. Poets, fiction writers, and musicians, many operating in

cities and university settings, authored and performed works that

reached a broad audience. Periodicals such as Maclean’s, Saturday

Night, Canadian Home Journal, Chatelaine, and Mayfair scrambled

to compete with American imports. A lobbying organization, the

Magazine Publishers Association of Canada, brought few concrete

results. In addition, the Aird Commission of 1928 recommended that

a public broadcasting network would provide cultural unity for the

country in the face of popular American radio stations. The Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation was created in 1932 to achieve this end.

Numerous writers and artists thus helped to fashion a Canadian

identity in the 1920s, but they did so in the shadow of a more

powerful, and thus threatening, American culture.

Canada and the Triangle in the Postwar Era

Canada’s connections with the United States and Britain altered

dramatically in the postwar era. In a milestone barely noticed at the

time, the United States surpassed Britain as Canada’s biggest trading

partner and greatest investor in the 1920s. Two important events

with the United States signaled a relationship that was becoming

more bilateral and direct in nature. In 1923 Canada and the United

States signed an agreement to regulate Pacific coastal fisheries. From

both a global and American frame of reference, the Halibut Treaty

was quite modest; nevertheless, it signaled an important step by

Canada to formulate its own agreements without British intervention.

The two countries also established formal ministries in each other’s

capitals in 1927. The forerunners of embassies, these ministries

symbolized the historical linkages between the North American

nations. Similar connections closely followed with France and Japan.

Canada’s changing relationship with Britain in the postwar era

was of equal import. Canadian input was instrumental during several

British treaty negotiations involving Japan and other Western

powers. When war tensions flared between Britain and Turkey in

Canada and the Triangle in the Postwar Era 135

1922, King’s government dragged its heels in responding to the

British call for support. Most important, the dominions and Britain

formalized a new relationship. Meetings in 1926 between dominion

leaders and British representatives yielded a key statement from the

conference chairman, Lord Balfour. It recommended the formaliza-

tion of “autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal

in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their

domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance

to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British

Commonwealth of Nations.” This report became the basis of the

1931 Statute of Westminster, which created the Commonwealth and

effectively gave the dominions, including Canada, the power to act

independently in matters of foreign policy. The bonds to Britain

remained durable, however, for the BNA Act remained a British

statute. Thus, the 1920s witnessed alterations in the triangular

relationship. By 1931 Canada had carved out a stronger bilateral

relationship with its southern neighbor and entered into a more equal

Commonwealth agreement with its former imperial master.

Canada Through War and Peace

The period from the late 1890s to the late 1920s brought sweeping

changes to Canada. Tremendous physical and demographic expan-

sion had finally created a country that was interconnected coast to

coast. The crisis of the Great War had paradoxically forged a new

sense of nationalism and combined purpose and simultaneously

introduced disagreements about conscription that threatened to rend

the national fabric along ethnic and language lines. The country faced

traumatic adjustments after the war, yet many Canadians flourished

in the expansive economy of the 1920s. Mainstream political parties

attempted to build a common interest among Canadians for national

development, while newer and issue-focused parties appealed to

various regions and classes. Finally, Canada modestly joined the

world stage as it reformulated its relationship with its most important

partners, Britain and the United States. If, as some historians

maintain, this was one of the greatest periods of national maturation

136 Canada Through War and Peace

and the formulation of self-identity for the peoples of Canada, it was

also undeniably a time of stress and limited achievement in gaining a

truly autonomous stature. The breathtaking financial crisis of 1929,

which precipitated a massive economic depression that persisted for

over a decade, would be a signal reminder of how closely interlinked

Canada’s fate had become with its neighbor.

Canada Through War and Peace 137

Chapter 7

Trial of Nationhood:

The Great Depression and

the War (1929–1945)

Canada Comes of Age

Canada came of age in the period bracketed by the two world wars.

The country’s experience defied a simple characterization in the

1920s. A boom in certain sectors of the economy and an expanding

middle class seemed to suggest that Canada was healthy and forward

looking. Yet large numbers of Canadians, especially laborers and

small farmers, scrambled to obtain essentials and agitated for

increased rights by striking or participating in the political arena.

In addition, Canada used its impressive wartime contribution as

leverage to secure more control over its foreign policy. As the country

incrementally pulled away from the British Empire in terms of trade,

investments, and policies, it drew closer to the American economic

and cultural orbit. Canada’s largest trading partner by the end of the

1920s was the United States, and the country’s traditional reliance on

British investments to supplement its economic growth was shifting to

American dollars.

The next two decades illuminated the implications of this changing

relationship. An economic downturn, the deepest depression in

Canada’s history, strained the country’s international relationships

Canada Comes of Age 139