The to Ottawa trek started together with the Great Depression in 1929. During this time period many men were unemployed with little to no cash. These people had been considered “Drifters”. The Canadian government feared that these terme conseillé would become angry and would start up a revolution against them, for that reason they developed relief camps for these males in remote areas in northern Ontario and British Columbia. Relief camps were unemployment homes which were meant to maintain your drifters out of towns and away of problems. The workers for these camps worked eight hours per day, 6 times a week so that as pay that they received clothes, a understructure, food and 20 pennies per day. Many men living in these types of camps were unhappy with their living conditions and described that as a prison.
In 1932, a Relief Camp Workers Union (RCWU) was created by Arthur Evans who was socialist and trade union organizer whom played the leading role in the on to Ottawa Trek. In April 1935, 1500 males from United kingdom Columbia’s alleviation camps went on strike and made their method to Vancouver to demonstration for better pay and better doing work conditions. Sadly, Vancouver did not help them mainly because they had almost no “relief money” which was a fund build to provide help for people in need. The underpaid workers ended up remaining in Vancouver intended for 2 several weeks, until their very own leader Arthur Evans recommended that they travel to Ottawa to get help. The men set off to Ottawa just to be ceased by Excellent Minister Bennett’s government who stopped the railways via allowing unichip to travel further. Only almost 8 leaders of the RCWU were able to make it to Ottawa to meet with the Prime Minister and make a deal the privileges of the personnel. The meeting was a failure and since Bennett feared this time would come, he did not want to hear the workers and claimed that they can were aiming to start a innovation. They personnel returned to Regina, decided that the trek would continue.
On July very first it was dominion day and the workers and the supporters kept a meeting inside the Regina marketplace square. These were trying to increase money to continue their journey, but the authorities was worried that the crowd would get out of control and did start to arrest the leaders with the strike including Arthur Evans. The riot continued right up until late night time, a few guys were murdered and many had been injured through the end 135 people were caught. This was the final of the onto Ottawa travel. Many of the personnel returned to Vancouver, as well as the government decided to shut down every relief camps within a season but the concerns of the jobless men still remained.