Could it be the "Dirty 30's" all over again?

By GERRY WARNER
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Oct. 3/08
Several years ago, for no good reason, I found myself in downtown Calgary with a little time on my hands. The office towers in Cow Town, while impressive, are not exactly tourist attractions and after wandering around for a while, I was ready to go back to my hotel when I came across what is surely downtown Calgary's greatest attraction - the Glenbow Museum.
Lots of money in Calgary and you can easily see that in the Glenbow, which has some of the most spectacular collections of aboriginal and Western Canadian artifacts I've ever seen. But there was one exhibit that literally stopped me in my tracks and left an indelible impression on me ever since.
It was about Prairie life in the Dirty 30's -- the dust bowl, hobo jungles, abandoned farms and the like. At the head of the exhibit hall was a giant, and I mean GIANT, sepia-toned picture that had been turned into a mural on the wall showing a typical prairie, farm family posed in front of the old homestead. It was a bleak picture, no question about that, but in some ways inspirational too. The family, and there must have been close to a dozen of them, looked beaten down by the elements and the harsh times they were living in, which was probably caught best by author Barry Broadfoot's "Ten Lost Years" on the Great Depression.
The decrepit farm house had a pronounced lean to it. There were holes in the roof, boards missing from the porch and peeled paint hanging from the walls. You could see a broken-down old wringer washing machine in the shadows on the porch and a few mangy curs resting at the feet of the children. And that's when it hit me. The children were bare-footed - no big deal - but then I started to look at the rest of the family. They were all bare-footed except for what looked to be the patriarch of the family and another who could have been his oldest son or probably the hired hand.
This was Canada in the 1930's. And people couldn't afford to buy shoes!
I quickly surmised that the two with boots on their feet had footwear because they did the heavy work around the farm. For the rest, shoes were an unaffordable luxury. I don't know if people starved to death in Canada during the Depression. I would like to think not and people were pretty resilient in those days before the social safety net and all the supports we take for granted now. But I'm willing to bet a lot of people were damn hungry those days and the lack of nutrition took its toll and along with hunger forced many of them on the streets or riding the rails.
When I was a reporter in Kamloops 20 years ago, I got to know a wonderful old fellow that worked the logging camps of B.C. in that period. He eventually lost his job and ended up in a relief camp and was later one of the "On to Ottawa" protesters who rode the rails to the nation's capital and got arrested for his pains along with many others. Bert told me about the hobo jungles along the way. There was a huge one in Kamloops, and I'm willing to bet one in Cranbrook too, long before we became a playground for our rich neighbors to the east.
I also recall a wonderful Doukhobor gentleman I knew in Castlegar who told me of the time in the 30's when he was so hungry he started going door-to-door offering to work and do odd jobs just for food, no pay. He said he eventually worked his way past Nelson and ended up knocking on the door of the famous Blaylock Estate on the North Shore named after Selwyn Blaylock, president of the Cominco operations in Trail and Kimberley. Despite the Depression, the Blaylocks were still rich enough to have servants and they turned Fred away at the door at which point he started crying. But there was compassion in the 30's, as well as a broken economic system, and before he got too far down the driveway the lady at the door invited Fred back and gave him a warm meal before he went along his way.
Then there was my own father, a teenager in the 30's, who received a B.C. government cheque for 24 cents - I still have the "cheque" -- for a week's work in the bush looking for forest fires.
And why have I bothered to relate these anecdotes and stories? Unless you've been under a rock the past week or sleeping in a cave with Rip Van Winkle, you must be aware of the current financial collapse to the south of us, which no less of an authority than former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, called a "once in a century event." By the time you read this, the U.S. House of Representatives may have approved the Senate bailout package passed Wednesday and we can all heave a sigh of relief.
But surely our own history right here in Canada shows us that when greed stalks the streets, in particular Wall Street and Bay Street, economic calamity can easily follow.
Just like the 30's.

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