On-to-Ottawa Trek

The On-to-Ottawa Trek was a long journey where 1 thousand unemployed men protested the dismal conditions in federal relief camps scattered in remote areas across Western Canada. The men lived and worked in these camps at a rate of twenty cents per day before walking out on strike in April 1935. After a two-month protest in Vancouver, British Columbia, camp strikers voted to bring their grievances to the federal government. The Great Depression crippled the Canadian economy and left one in nine citizens on relief. The relief, however, did not come free; the Bennett Government ordered the Department of National Defence to organize work camps where single unemployed men were used to construct roads and other public works at a rate of twenty cents per day. The poor working and living conditions led to general unrest in the camps.

The Workers' Unity League helped the men organize the Relief Camp Workers' Union in 1933. A strike was held in December 1934 with the men leaving the various camps and protesting in Vancouver. They returned to the camps after a promise of a government commission to look into their complaints. When a commission was not appointed a second strike was approved by the members and a walkout was called on April 4, 1935.

About 1,000 strikers headed for Ottawa. The strikers’ demands were wages of 50 cents an hour for unskilled work, union wages for skilled, and at least 120 hours of work a month; the provision of adequate first aid equipment in the camps; the extension of the Workmen’s Compensation Act to include camp workers; recognition of democratically elected workers' committees; that workers in camps be granted the right to vote in elections; and the camps be removed from the purview of the Department of National Defence. Public support for the men was enormous, but the municipal, provincial and federal governments passed responsibility between themselves. They then decided to take their grievances to the federal government. On June 3, 1935, hundreds of men began boarding boxcars headed east in what would become known as the “On-to-Ottawa Trek.”

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