Canada's Great Depression: Part 3 - Police Brutality

Is there a country-wide version of "fight or flight"? I know it's not that clear-cut, but when a country falls into tragedy mode, in this case the collapse of the economy, it's going to inevitably react with big, sweeping measures. No one's ever sure of what the right thing to do is, but everyone's certain that the right way is something. Just as no man set on fire will wait for it to burn itself out, a country with a shattered economy is going to go into panic mode. In Canada's case, their big, sweeping measure was to bring down the iron fist of extreme control. The events of the time feel like something out of a third-world country (or America, maybe) where personal freedoms are trounced upon, being poor is criminal, and may God have mercy on your soul if you say a bad word about capitalism.

A riot in Regina. I think. People look awfully casual for
a riot, but things just moved slower back in those days.

A small percentage of the population thought that with the economic collapse in full force, capitalism was proven to be a failure and it was time to usher in communism. This mostly came from the fact that there were people literally starving to death, and that Canada seemed like a country that was still plentiful in terms of resources. The problem was everyone hated communism, the police included, and speaking up about it was a surefire way to get busted up. 

That's not to say it was illegal; the Communist Party went against no laws, and the police had no real cause to dismantle any rallies, but that still didn't stop it from happening. Communists were arrested and beaten before they even started their (remember, perfectly legal at this time) meetings. Rallies in public areas were set upon by police before they would even start speaking, sometimes catching unfortunate passerby in the crossfire. Eventually, they got tired enough of the communists - I'll note that their voter support was still at a bare minimum - that they outlawed communist organizations. Men with communist ties would be subject to raids of their homes in an attempt to find ties to Russia (yes, yes, there's a Donald Trump joke in here but low-hanging fruit isn't that fun to pick). Their belongings were to be confiscated, leaving those that were already destitute with somehow less than they had before. 

Since there still was a semblance of law and order, they would have to be given a trial if they were to be actually convicted of supporting communism, and thus subject to deportation. Here's the kicker - they'd basically take them away with little media attention and send them off to Halifax. The reason for that was they wouldn't have anyone there that could stand witness for them and they wouldn't be able to pay for a proper lawyer, effectively stacking the deck against them hard enough to ensure a conviction. "Proven" communist, they'd be shipped off somewhere and the problem would be more or less solved. The prosecution of the communists was so strong that Tim Buck, a leader of the communists in spite of having the least communist-sounding name imaginable, was almost killed after a prison riot when eight shots were fired into his cell. He had no part whatsoever in the riot, sitting quietly and listening to the fracas outside. 

While being communist seemed the worst thing you could be, it was little better than being poor. "Tin canning", a practice that's basically begging on the streets, was also outlawed. Those that were out canning would get arrested, but that doesn't mean that they'd stop. The tin canners eventually organized (which is partly proof that the men that were dirt poor were not stupid or lazy, but rather hard-working everyday people who simply couldn't find a job) and had a network of canners that would replace those that would get arrested with another man on that corner, forcing the police to acknowledge that they couldn't arrest all of them. 

The government's solution was to create "relief camps" where men without work were given manual labour jobs for essentially no pay but a place to rest. The camps were in shocking condition, the pay was insulting, and the work trivial - sometimes it would be as simple as digging a ditch that would later just be refilled, all of which able to be done by machine that they had access to. Further, those that would quit would be blacklisted and prevented from re-entering.

Partly in protest to the laws against tin canning and also due to the conditions of the relief camps, a mass protest came to fruition. The plan was to have as many men as they could bring ride the rails to parliament and state their case. They called it the "On to Ottawa" trek, which brought around a thousand unemployed. Police threatened to arrest anyone who would help the trekkers, but of course this was absurd as there was no true charge that could be given.

A picture from the "On to Ottawa" trek. Everyone's
clamouring to get to the top because that's where you
have the coolest fight scenes in movies.

The threat of arrests culminated into a riot in Regina. The RCMP, ordered remotely by Ottawa to quell the protests, worked with the police to storm in and make arrests. About 100 mounties and 29 officers met at a busy square where several hundred strikers in addition to over a thousand spectators met. Immediately there was confusion, as no clear orders were given to either police or RCMP; some were told to storm in at the sound of a whistle, while others were told to sit back and let a few officers usher people out. When a whistle blew, chaos erupted and everyone tried to flee, causing the police to go in swinging and rioters to fight officers. 39 RCMP were hospitalized, as well as seventeen strikers and citizens injured with gunshot wounds. The stunning part about this all was that up until then, the protests had been entirely peaceful; the trekkers knew that discipline had to be kept to the maximum as any destruction or property damage would be grounds to run their name through the mud in the press.

Rioters after having been kicked out of the post office in
Vancouver. The man on the left is, strangely, beaming. You could
remove him, say he's skipping rocks with his family,
throw him in a Tim Horton's commercial and no
one would know the difference.

This was far from an isolated incident. In Vancouver, a thousand-strong crowd of protesters had a sit-down over the course of a month in a post office. Again, everything was entirely peaceful until the police came in to break it up, without charge, by gassing and then beating any that refused to leave. 42 were hospitalized along with five officers. Another riot in Saskatchewan ended in a similar manner, where coal miners demanded livable conditions. Clearly planning on a peaceful protest as they brought women and children along, the police came in and effectively caused the panic and bloodshed that soon followed. Three men died by their wounds, and a monument to the event still stands with the words "Murdered by the RCMP".

The Canadian police and RCMP were given a difficult hand to play. That much is certain. They had to suppress riots and protests to the best of their ability, but from every account it seems they caused more harm than good. The violent suppression of political dissidents and the iron-fist style of putting down riots sounds so distinctly un-Canadian that it I could hardly believe it happened in our country. Surely, it's a black mark on our history, redeemed in part by the decency of many of the poor and those that helped them along the way.