Review
ALL HELL CAN’T STOP US:
The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot
by Bill Waiser
Fifth House, 332 pp.
By 1935, the Great Depression had been raging in the capitalist world for six years. Canada, especially the West – given its dependence on the production of staples and location in the international economy – was in a particularly vulnerable position and suffered accordingly. At the height of the Depression in 1933, close to 30 per cent of Canada’s labour force was unemployed.
However, the government of R.B. Bennett, clinging to notions of economic liberalism, was loath to intervene. Instead, it offered stop-gap measures, including the creation of unemployment relief camps in remote areas of the country. The workers there got 20 cents a day and the conditions were far from idyllic. Not surprisingly, there was unrest.
The result was the On-to-Ottawa trek, in which more than a thousand men from the British Columbia camps set out to take their concerns to Ottawa. By the time the trek reached Regina, Bennett and the RCMP, fearing the influence of the Communist Party, decided to make a stand in the city. As a result, on July 1, 1935, there was a riot – hundreds were injured, scores of trekkers and supporters were arrested, and two men were killed.
In All Hell Can’t Stop Us: The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot, University of Saskatchewan historian Bill Waiser provides a compelling, detailed and at times poignant account of the trek and its untimely demise in Regina. The volume is a welcome addition to the history of workers in Canada, and provides a tidy overview of the interaction of politics, economics and dreams of normalcy in the "dirty ’30s."
Perhaps the most engaging aspect of the book is Waiser’s account of how the government misinterpreted the political dimensions of the trek. Certainly, the trek was "led" by Arthur (Slim) Evans, a member of the Communist Party. Additionally, numerous trekkers held radical views grounded in their subjective experience of the economic requirements of capitalism.
However, Waiser clearly and sensitively shows that many of the marchers were trekking largely because of their desire for work and wages. The majority simply wanted to fit in with broader society and escape the unremitting hell of long-term unemployment. Unfortunately, Bennett did not understand these aspirations. Indeed, drawing from a wide variety of sources, Waiser illustrates how Bennett believed this to be a revolutionary movement and used, as was frequently the case in the history of working-class struggle, the coercive power of the state. The results were tragic.
At face value, the trek ended in failure, but the allure of the march has had a lasting effect on the democratic left in Canada. Certainly, the trek itself did not lead to the creation of the welfare state, but it did reveal the latent power of the organized working class. And it could be argued that this power was the primary reason for the creation of the welfare state, a lesson that should be remembered as both the federal and provincial governments continue to dismantle the safety net with reckless abandon and glee. As Waiser shows, people have limits.
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