An effective leader must be strong. He can demonstrate strength through a determined adherence to core principles even when the siren song of expediency offers the fleeting popularity of an easy battle easily won. He must allow for tactical flexibility and remain confident when others lose faith in his principles, goals, strategies, tactics, or even him. The effective leader must also recognize when his strength crosses the ever-shifting, invisible line and becomes stubbornness. Stubbornness suggests not a dedicated allegiance to the principled attainment of a goal but rather a surrendering to ego, leading to a refusal to entertain new facts, contrary opinions, or novel options. It reveals itself in a willingness to intimidate and micromanage. The stubborn leader sees the victory of another as his own defeat, for he sees power not as a means to an end but rather as a finite resource to be gathered and ruthlessly guarded behind the fortress of a smile.

Two issues with which Bennett had to deal in the last two years of his administration offer insight as to whether Bennett can be deemed a strong or a stubborn leader. They also allow a deeper understanding with respect to the degree to which Bennett’s Tory principles informed all that he did throughout his political career. The first was a protest movement that began in April 1935. The year before, Bennett had created camps in remote areas to house and provide work for unemployed, single young men. While thousands had taken up the offer of the relief camps, many became unhappy. The protest began in British Columbia as a request for improved camp conditions, but it soon grew to include demands for more direct government action to help the unemployed everywhere. By June, hundreds of protesters were on trains heading toward Ottawa to take their concerns to Parliament Hill. The second issue began with Bennett’s old friend Harry Stevens, who in his capacity as minister of trade and commerce brought to the country’s attention what he considered the misused clout of large retailers. His actions led to an inquiry, then a Royal Commission, and finally to misunderstandings and unfortunate clashes that resulted in his resignation and an irreparable split in Conservative ranks.

UNREST AND REACTION

The Vancouver Strike, the On to Ottawa Trek, and the deadly Regina Riot that ended it all began four years earlier with Bennett’s attempts to address problems related to unemployment. By the late spring of 1931, a number of factors were coming together in ways that made many parts of Canada resemble a tinderbox yearning for a spark. Things got worse when the number of unemployed Canadians reached disastrous new heights. In 1933, the official national figure reached 30 per cent, but that was merely a guess. In many regions and in some sectors it was higher. And the numbers are just numbers — cold and remorseless. It was the people behind the numbers who mattered. Each individual mattered, each one was hurting, and each one had a family who shared that pain.

Thousands of men roamed the country in a dangerous and desperate search for work. They slept on benches. They ate from garbage cans or in soup kitchens. There were many complaints about the soup kitchen food, the conditions, and servers who were either too gruff or ladled their soup along with evangelical appeals to find Jesus. Many municipalities were finding it increasingly difficult to finance relief payments when the numbers demanding and deserving relief kept going up as precipitously as their tax rolls kept tumbling down. They could hardly help their own residents, let alone the growing number of job-searching transients. Municipalities screamed to their provincial capitals for help; the provincial governments, in turn, demanded assistance from Ottawa. But all levels of government were experiencing the same fiscal problems.

Added to the economic hardships were intersecting social strains that were tearing at the fabric of civil society. Marriages were breaking up. Many that should have were dissolving into violence and acrimony. Parents were unable to feed and clothe their children. Many grown and married children who wanted to be on their own could not afford it and ended up staying with parents long after they should have moved out. Crime, alcoholism, and violence were on the rise.

Unemployed men rode from city to city on top of or beneath freight trains, looking for work. Riding the rails was illegal and dangerous. Around every city and town of any size grew makeshift camps where homeless men stayed for a day or two, searching for work. The jungles, or Bennett boroughs, as these camps were often called, were hellish places of petty crime, violence, and vice. On occasions too numerous to count, the local police, RCMP, or sometimes even bands of vigilantes smashed through the jungles rousting the men and destroying their shacks. The goal was simply to keep them moving. But more came on the next day’s train.

In a detailed letter to Bennett in June 1931, Minister of Labour Gideon Robertson spoke of the conditions he found in British Columbia and Alberta. The tale he told was horrific. He spoke of unrest among approximately four thousand unemployed people when the Edmonton and Calgary city councils cut off all forms of relief. The army needed to be called out to prevent violence. The problems among the unemployed were being stirred to a fever pitch, he argued, because communist agitators were exploiting desperate men locked in seemingly hopeless situations.

Robertson suggested enforcing the ban on free train travel that was part of both railways’ regulations. Further, he said, the federal government should do something to provide employment for the growing number of young, single men. He advocated the establishment of work camps. Continuing, Robertson suggested to Bennett that municipal and the two provincial government leaders with whom he had consulted would support a program of deporting “aliens” who were unemployed but had lived in Canada for only two or three years.1

In the fall of 1931, Bennett asked R.J. Manion, minister of railways and canals, to look into the issue of men riding the rails. Manion went beyond that narrow mandate and consulted with social workers and with his friend General Andrew McNaughton about the problems caused by the presence in Canadian cities of so many unemployed, transient young men and the suffering they were subjected to. McNaughton is a fascinating Canadian. He was a brave leader in the First World War and an able and important general in the Second, but he was more than that. He was a slight man with piercing brown eyes that appeared to be serious and frowning even when in the best of moods. He graduated from McGill with degrees in science and engineering and was later inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame for having invented the cathode ray, which led to the discovery of radar. In the early 1930s, he became involved with civil aviation and represented Canada at a number of international conferences dealing with aviation, engineering, and military matters. He was earning respect for his work on the St. Lawrence Seaway project. Now Manion needed him to help out in another way.

Like Robertson, Manion was appalled not only that there were so many single, unemployed people, but also that they seemed to be losing hope in their country and in themselves. He feared that there would be more unrest if something was not done with and for them. Every revolution in history has at its root angry and inconsolable young men with time on their hands and nothing left to lose. McNaughton knew that and shared Manion’s fear. He also recognized a perfect confluence of needs: Canada needed stability while also needing airstrips to create a national system of civil aviation, while mayors needed unemployed young men out of their cities, and those young men needed housing and work. Consequently, he agreed with Robertson’s idea that work camps could hire and house young men, and thereby give them the morale boost they needed. They would do work that would benefit the country, and, by removing them from the cities, the possibility of their causing trouble would decrease. Along with respected Alberta social worker Charlotte Whitton, Manion and McNaughton made presentations to Bennett, who asked a number of probing questions of each and then approved the idea.

An order-in-council was passed on October 8, 1932, and the planning for the camps began in earnest. The Department of Labour would be responsible for them, but the Department of National Defence (DND) would build and run them. This arrangement was seen as the cheapest and most efficient way to proceed because the military had experience with prisoner-of-war camps and could easily adapt their plans and procedures to the new enterprise. It was decided that 237 camps would be built, beginning in British Columbia and Alberta. They would be constructed far from cities and towns. They would be deep in the woods that were to be cleared as part of the work projects for the men. Cabinet approved $668,000 for camp construction costs.

It was agreed that camp rules would be strict. To be admitted to a relief camp one needed to be single, over eighteen years of age, male, living outside the family home, and healthy. Although the term was not defined, a young man could not be a “political agitator.” Transportation was provided to the camps at no charge. Upon entry, young men were given clothing, soap and towels, a bed, three meals a day, and the use of showers and toilet facilities — again all without charge. For all of this the men were expected to work forty-four hours a week at whatever job was assigned. They would be given twenty cents a day for spending money and 1.3 cents a day for cigarettes. The money was not meant to be and was never called wages. Their work was unpaid. Free courses for all men who wanted them were set up through Frontier College. It was made clear that the men would not be allowed to form camp committees and that any complaints had to be brought on an individual basis to the foreman. Further, a man could leave the camp at any time, but once gone he could not return. The rules were explained to all who entered the camps and then conspicuously posted.

Men began arriving at the first ninety-eight camps in British Columbia’s interior in the late fall of 1932. They were put to work clearing trees, building roads, and constructing airstrips. The camps were originally set up to accommodate two thousand men. They were so quickly and overwhelmingly subscribed that within two years more camps had been built and over eleven thousand young men were living in and working around them. By the time they were closed in 1936, by the Mackenzie King government, 170,248 unemployed young men had spent time in the camps.2

Bennett had a difficult time discerning whether the camps were successfully meeting their goals because every letter and report he received seemed to contradict the last. Some detailed rampant corruption. McNaughton and Manion acknowledged problems and addressed them by transferring some men, banishing others, and tightening procedures. By June 1934, McNaughton was able to report that the camps were doing what they had been set up to do. He wrote that they were financially feasible. More importantly, he stated they had played a significant role in saving many Canadian cities from social unrest that would have necessitated a military presence to maintain or restore order.3

Meanwhile, however, complaints continued. A Liberal member from Winnipeg, for instance, spoke in the House of deplorable conditions at the Riding Mountain, Manitoba, camp. Bennett listened to a sorry tale of the camp’s housing consisting of a dimly lit, windowless, tarpaper structure that was seventy-nine feet long and twenty-four feet wide. It held stoves in its narrow centre aisle which separated rows of straw-filled, rough-hewn bunk beds. Eighty-eight men stayed in the smoky, smelly, and dirty structure. The conditions were such, it was argued, that even those running the place worried about the long-term emotional scars that the men would suffer.

But those condemning camp conditions were matched by those who claimed that the conditions were really not that bad. Undisputed friend of the working class and the unemployed J.S. Woodsworth spoke many times about the camps, but his greatest complaint was that they were run by the DND. He worried that the military, used to dealing with soldiers or prisoners, was exerting too much control over the lives of the men. With respect to living conditions, though, he stated in March 1934, “I can quite understand that life in these camps may be superior to that in every cheap lodging and around the soup kitchens that have been established in our cities . . .”⁴ Bennett investigated every complaint but, as Woodsworth’s thoughts showed, the reality of the camps became increasingly difficult to ascertain.

An issue that needed to be addressed was that, in British Columbia, there were really two camp systems. Although all were built by the DND, some were administered by the provincial government under the direction of R.G. Fordham. While rules and conditions were similar, it became generally accepted that the Fordham camps were superior in terms of the quality of food and accommodations and the general treatment of relief workers. As unions and the Communist Party cleverly infiltrated the camps and began to secretly organize workers, they exploited the differences and demanded changes in the DND-run camps. The problems led to the BC government removing itself from the administration of some camps and a levelling of all to DND standards. Understandably, many union leaders and communist organizers used what had become slight temporary differences between the camps to stir unrest.5

By the beginning of 1933, some camps had already seen wildcat strikes. Building on these strikes, many organizers and workers ignored the restriction on camp committees and the Relief Camp Workers’ Union (RCWU) was born. By July 1933, it had representation in every British Columbia and Alberta camp and even in some in Saskatchewan and Ontario.

Often the RCWU organized written lists of complaints that were submitted to administrators and many times those complaints were addressed. Sometimes there were wildcat strikes over minor issues and these too often led to minor changes. In September 1933, for instance, a number of strikes over the tobacco ration led to a DND decision that tobacco would be provided free of charge to all relief camp workers. Another example of the government’s flexibility when pushed, came in March 1934 when a number of strikes led to a complaint making its way to the prime minister’s office. Bennett was advised by BC premier Duff Pattullo that many relief camp workers who had been thrown out due to their involvement with strikes or violence had actually been goaded into misbehaviour by outside communist agitators and so should be allowed back in if they applied and went through a review process. Bennett accepted the advice. Many found life back on the street worse than camp life had been after all, and so were allowed to return.⁶

Meanwhile, the mercurial Liberal premier Pattullo continued to hound Bennett with complaints about the number of unemployed men on the streets of his cities. He wondered if the federal government could not simply round up these men and force them into camps. When more premiers and mayors wrote with similar complaints and suggestions, Manion asked McNaughton to investigate the idea of imprisoning unemployed single men. McNaughton began drawing up plans for the creation of camps of detention. By mid-1934, plans had proceeded to the point that McNaughton had scouted out locations, such as Kingston’s Fort Henry. Manion’s staff had composed an order-in-council for cabinet’s consideration. But when Bennett heard of the plans he found the idea abhorrent and shut it all down before it began.

But unrest in the camps continued. With the growth of RCWU came a corresponding increase in the number and intensity of camp disturbances. Camp administrators reminded relief workers that if they were unhappy with the rules, or food, or twenty-cent-a-day allowance, or anything else about the camp, for that matter, they were free to leave. The option was somewhat disingenuous, as many municipalities had ended all support of transient unemployed and the RCMP and many local police departments had begun to strictly enforce trespass laws in the cities, towns, and on railways. The result was that many young, unemployed transient men found relief camps to be de facto compulsory.7

Bennett demanded more reports on the camps. He continued to defend them and the policy that had brought them about. On April 12, 1934, for example, Bennett spoke in South Oxford, Ontario, supporting the Conservative candidate in a by-election. He acknowledged the hard times that all people of Canada had been experiencing and noted that, while the worst seemed to be past, a great deal of work still needed to be done. He acknowledged also that the government had made some mistakes but on the whole was proving itself more successful in dealing with the global crisis than most other national governments. He pointed to several areas of particular pride; one of them was the relief camps.

The prime minister told those assembled that the camps were a part of the government’s overall emergency relief effort. He said they were meant to help single men by preserving their dignity and morale while keeping them healthy and active, and retaining their suitability for employment. He boasted that he had just received a report noting that about fifty thousand men had moved through the camps since they had been opened and that that number alone proved their value.⁸

By the end of 1934, despite Bennett’s efforts to clearly explain their purposes and benefits, the relief camp program had become almost as widely unpopular as the prime minister who had created them. Recently elected Liberal premiers continued to make partisan hay by criticizing the Bennett government for the conditions and optics of the camps. Adding to the negative cacophony were those of the increasingly popular political left, represented by the CCF, the unions, and the communists. One of the most frequently heard complaints was about the provision of twenty cents a day for expenses. Many argued that it was insultingly low pay and that regular hourly wages should be instituted. Bennett spoke in the House and wrote a number of letters explaining over and over again that the twenty-cent stipend was not and had never been intended to be pay. The camps, he patiently explained again, had been set up to provide housing, clothing, food, and work for unemployed and transient young men. Bennett even found himself having to defend the camps to his own backbenchers, who in the growing gale of criticism seemed unable to admit to a basic grasp of the camp’s intentions. Responding to sharp questions from Ira Cotnam, the Conservative member from Ontario’s Renfrew North, for instance, Bennett wrote, “No one suggests that the amount paid is for wages. It is merely a little pocket money for those who are on relief, and we receive letters daily from men who are not able to obtain work who speak in the warmest terms of what is being done for them.”9 Despite his clarity and best efforts, Bennett was losing control of the narrative.

Meanwhile, the RCWU’s power continued to broaden and deepen. Part of the reason was the involvement of Arthur “Slim” Evans. A wiry little man with a sharp tongue and acidic wit, Evans had been born in Toronto but grew up in the American and Canadian West. In 1912, when only twenty-four years old, he had served time in a Kansas prison for the role he played in organizing an International Workers of the World free speech protest. He was behind bars again in Drumheller, Alberta, for leading a violent strike for the One Big Union movement. In 1933, Evans was incarcerated yet again for embezzling union funds in Penticton. Upon leaving jail he was hired by the Communist Party of Canada to organize the National Unemployed Workers Association. Through that work he became involved with the camps and a bane to the prime minister.

On December 7, 1934, Evans and some others organized a five-hundred-person protest rally outside Victoria’s picturesque legislative buildings. They brought demands and a 30,665-signature petition to Premier Pattullo. Later that day, Evans met alone with DND officials and repeated his demands. Days later there were more protests, some involving the occupation of DND offices in Nanaimo, Vancouver, and Victoria. Evans insisted that men hated the camps. His main demands were that the twenty-cent stipend be replaced with work for wages and that the hundreds of men who had been forced from the camps — he called them blacklisted — be allowed to return. It is not clear if Evans understood the irony in his requests. Bennett ignored them.

The unrest that was moving out of British Columbia’s camps and into the cities led to more letters pouring into the prime minister’s office. Over the Christmas break, Pattullo made a number of contradictory requests. In one letter, the premier asked that the camps be ended. In another, he asked for concessions to improve conditions. In yet another, he asked that all unemployed single men be rounded up and imprisoned. Bennett wrote back saying that he appreciated Pattullo’s thoughts and ideas but that the current policies regarding the camps were sound and would continue.

Bennett’s firm stand appeared to be effective. By January 3, 1935, nearly all relief workers who had left the camps had returned and been allowed to resume their work. Many, after all, had just gone home for Christmas. The only exception was about a hundred workers whom administrators had deemed dangerous agitators. They were not allowed re-entry, despite their expressed desire to return. For a couple of months, peace graced the camps and a great deal of valuable infrastructure work was accomplished.

But those organizing the men continued to work diligently. On March 15, Evans and delegates from camps in BC and Alberta assembled for a conference in Kamloops. They drew up a long list of demands including, most importantly, better camp conditions and work for wages. Others, meanwhile, continued to organize in the camps and persuaded more workers to support joint action. Organizers worked in cities and towns attempting to shape public opinion. Some newspaper editors began to publicize the RCWU complaints while some found themselves threatened if they did not. The newspaper in Princeton, BC, for instance, published an editorial critical of the RCWU, but after being visited by a number of union “representatives” printed a retraction the next day.10 Businesses found themselves similarly intimidated. Even a Princeton brothel became involved. When one of the men enjoying himself upstairs was found to be a cook in a relief camp that did not support the RCWU, a union leader had the madam throw him out.¹¹

In June 1935, Bennett reported to the House that since the camps’ inception 12,601 men had been asked to leave for inciting disturbances. More than that number had replaced them and were doing valuable work. Bennett defended the camps, arguing that inspectors had visited and reported that conditions were good. Where problems were found they were fixed. He praised the camps as tending for single, homeless, unemployed young men in a humane and caring way and said that social workers from other countries had seen the camps and expressed their “warm approval.”12

The camps were neither as bad as some reports claimed nor as good as Bennett insisted. Conditions were shabby enough and at enough of them, however, that the camps became useful for those wishing to use them as examples of the hardships that Depression-strapped Canadians were facing. Their very existence allowed them to be exploited as examples of the failure of democratic capitalism and thus to promote particular political and ideological agendas. The problem for Bennett was to decide whether the complaints that he read about camp conditions were reasonable requests for reasonable actions or the propaganda of agitators. A third option was whether the reports from those responsible for the camps were accurate or the spin of those trying to protect their jobs and reputations. In this highly charged atmosphere, Bennett erred on the side of seeing foreign-born rabble-rousers and communists behind many of the complaints and demands for change. As he wrote to Saskatchewan’s Liberal premier Jimmy Gardiner, “The government’s goal is to maintain the fabric of society and the institutions of our country against the illegal threats and demands of the Communists and their associates.”¹³

This orientation should have surprised no one. Bennett had little sympathy for anyone who disobeyed the law, no matter what circumstance led to their decision to do so — including workers striking for what they believed to be right. This belief ran on a parallel track with his conviction that those who immigrated to Canada owed their adopted land the respect that is shown through obeying its laws. Those immigrants who fail to demonstrate respect in that fashion, he reasoned, should reconsider their decision and return to their home. He even reserved the right, legally his, to deport immigrants who had not yet completed the naturalization process but were found guilty of crimes either at home or in Canada. He had made his beliefs in such matters plain four years before. In his response to a question about the growing influence of communists in organized labour, Bennett had told the House in February 1931,

If the government is given reason to believe that there is a settled purpose in the minds of a considerable number of people — not large, numerically, but scattered over the various parts of Canada — to take action against the maintenance of law and order . . . then we will take such action . . . and free this country from those who have proven themselves unworthy of our Canadian citizenship.14

To afford the government the power to deal with what he saw as troublemakers, Bennett applied Section 98 of the Criminal Code. The section had been created by order-in-council after the tragedy of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. It was enacted in legislation by Mackenzie King in 1927. Intent upon maintaining law and order while ridding Canada of revolutionaries, Section 98 rendered it illegal to hold meetings or publish material that promoted force or violence as a vehicle for political protest or change. A linked amendment to the Immigration Act allowed for the deportation of those deemed unworthy of citizenship due to their actions or perceived danger, including violating the provisions of Section 98. That Bennett supported the spirit of these amendments was seen in his including a section in the 1931 Relief Bill that allowed the federal or any provincial government to take whatever action was deemed necessary to preserve order. Bennett had defended the Relief Bill provision by standing in the House with a copy of the 1914 War Measures Act in his hand and exclaiming, “This is a land of freedom where men may think as they will and say what they will, as long as they do not attack the foundations upon which our civilization has been built.”¹⁵

Section 98 had been controversial from the start. Critics claimed that it smacked of authoritarianism as it allowed the government to punish anyone for even thinking in a way the government did not like. In November 1932, a reporter asked Bennett about Section 98 and his response was not only printed the next day but read by Woodsworth into the public record. A “sound bite” that would haunt the prime minister was thus created. Bennett said, “We know that throughout Canada this propaganda is being put forward by organizations from foreign lands that seek to destroy our institutions and we ask every man and woman to put the iron heel of ruthlessness against a thing of that kind.”¹⁶ Those who hated Section 98 and the power it gave the government — and hated Bennett for expressing his willingness to use that power — had a new nickname for the prime minister: Iron Heel Bennett.

The propaganda and threat to which Bennett was referring was communism. When Bennett took office in 1930, only seventeen years had passed since Vladimir Lenin had led the Bolshevik Revolution. Only sixteen had passed since Borden had sent 6,000 Canadian soldiers to Russia to support the anti-Bolshevik forces in the civil war that lasted years and killed thousands. Only nine years had passed since the Canadian Communist Party had been created. Like all other communist parties around the world, the Canadian party at that time was a child of the Soviet Comintern and took direction and funds from Moscow. In 1928, Josef Stalin publicly and proudly had the Comintern direct all communist parties to work to become the sole voice of the working classes of all capitalist countries by moving into labour unions and destroying the socialist parties that were competing for the hearts and minds of workers.17

By 1929, the Communist Party of Canada had infiltrated labour cells in factories across the country. Its Canadian Tribune regularly advocated support for Stalin and the Soviet Union, and urged workers to reject the gradualism of labour and socialist parties while moving quickly to overthrow the democratic-capitalist system. By 1931, it had become a powerful force among many intellectuals and many working-class people, especially in urban centres such as Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Thunder Bay, and Windsor. It claimed in 1933 to have played a role in 75 per cent of Canadian strikes.¹⁸

In August 1931, Bennett used Section 98 to have Communist Party leaders Tim Buck, Sam Carr, and six others arrested for unlawful association and seditious conspiracy. It was as blatant a demonstration as one could imagine, both of Bennett’s conviction that communism was a dangerous force in the country and his determination to do something about it. For others, regardless of its legality, it was a bald demonstration of Iron Heel Bennett’s ruthless use of undemocratic power. All those arrested were convicted and spent two-and-a-half years in Kingston’s maximum-security prison — they became known throughout Canada as the Kingston Eight.

Within weeks of his imprisonment, shots were fired into Buck’s cell, narrowly missing him. Rumours spread among communist sympathizers that Bennett had ordered him assassinated. With his arrest and narrow escape Buck was becoming an unlikely folk hero.

In response to Buck’s arrest, an organization was established calling itself the Canadian Labour Defence League. It comprised a disparate group of men and women all concerned with addressing the needs of the working class and having the imprisoned men released. The league was a front organization for the Communist Party of Canada.19 In November 1933, a delegation travelled to Ottawa and secured a meeting with the prime minister. It began politely enough, led by the Reverend A.E. Smith, a well-known communist and former minister from Saskatchewan. But it quickly degenerated as Smith and others berated and insulted the prime minister, and Bennett lost his temper. Bennett was forced to call an abrupt end to the meeting and have the delegation forcibly removed.

A play called Eight Men Speak, about Buck’s arrest and the attempt on his life, was performed at the Standard Theatre in Toronto just a couple of days later. The local police shut it down after one performance, stating that it was distasteful. Police in Winnipeg threatened to revoke the licence of a production company that announced it would stage the play. Meanwhile, Smith had been making speeches in which he spoke of the need to replace the government and accusing Bennett of having ordered Buck’s murder. He was arrested and charged with sedition under Section 98. Canada was gathering political prisoners.

The fiasco of Smith’s meeting with Bennett, the cancelling of the play, and Smith’s arrest led to another influx of letters to the prime minister. Many were from the same unions and organizations as before and focused upon Buck and the Kingston Eight and demanded their release. Most simply completed and mailed in a preprinted form adding only the name of their organization or local, the names of the signing officers, and the date.

Smith was acquitted. His trial had provided him with a pulpit from which to speak of communist goals and to rail against Bennett. While much that he said was dismissed by mainstream media, there were some who saw merit in his criticism of the government. The Toronto Herald, for instance, published an editorial stating that it disagreed with everything Smith stood for. It continued,

But we are glad the jury squelched the proposal to send him to jail for venturing to air his opinions. If we are going to send every man to the pen who holds views contrary to our own or who ventures to severely criticize the government in power, we will have to build bigger and better jails to hold them all.20

An unpopular prime minister’s ham-fisted attempts to protect the country from communism were rendering him even more unpopular. Among Bennett’s literally hundreds of Christmas greetings that year was a small card boasting an illustration of a young boy in a cap holding a hammer and sickle. The card stated, “Revolutionary Greetings from B.C. Canada 1933–4 — For a New Year of Decisive Struggles Against Capitalism.” Inside was a quote from Tim Buck which said in part, “The future holds only fear for dying capitalism and its henchmen, for before them stands their doom, the inevitable world victory of the workers against the capitalist system of anarchy, poverty and war.”²¹ In January 1935, with Bennett focused primarily on his New Deal radio addresses and attendant legislation, another 186 resolutions and letters arrived. They were almost all worded exactly the same: the eight imprisoned communists were either war or political prisoners, and must be released.

The next weeks brought yet another effort whereby a number of unions and locals again used exactly the same form to put forth resolutions demanding that Section 98 be torn up and that all persons still held in custody under the section be immediately released. It was easy to see that much of the effort was organized by the Communist Party simply to have Tim Buck and other communists released from prison. No doubt many of the correspondents were sincere in their belief that Section 98 violated Canadian values. It was difficult, however, to divide those whose protests were sincere from those seeking merely to exploit the situation to promote an ideological point of view. A letter in a category of its own stated, “If you refuse to release all the political prisoners within one week’s time, YOU SHALL SURELY DIE.” It was signed “Jesus Christ.” Unfortunately neither the envelope nor letter contained a return address.²²

Upon Buck’s release in November 1934 he was welcomed as a martyr to the communist cause. To mark the occasion, a rally was organized. Seventeen thousand people packed Maple Leaf Gardens and eight thousand more had to be turned away at the door. Buck mesmerized the audience with a blistering attack on Bennett and the forces of the bourgeoisie that he was said to represent. Seated on the stage during the address was Liberal Ontario premier Mitchell Hepburn.

The Communist Party grew more powerful — and infiltrated more unions — with the positive publicity Buck had earned and the hard work he and others had done. Their message resonated with many workers suffering the hardships of the Depression. By 1935, twenty-five communist candidates had won municipal and school board elections. Blairmount, Alberta, elected an entire slate of communists to fill its council and its first bylaw was to rename its main street Tim Buck Boulevard. The party infiltrated so many of Ontario’s CCF riding associations that in 1936 Woodsworth dissolved the Ontario CCF. In recognizing the Communist Party’s goals and growing power, Bennett was clearly not using a bogey to frighten but acknowledging a social force with which to be reckoned.

Growing alongside the power of the Communist Party was a trend toward violent strikes. While throughout his public and private careers Bennett had fought for the rights of those without economic clout or political power, he had little use for those unions, whether communist dominated or not, that used the threat of strikes to bring about improvements in the working lives of their members. From time to time Bennett would meet protesters, labour leaders, or others who were advocating what he considered radical ideas. He once met in a large room with a clear view to the front of the Parliament buildings. Bennett set it up so that the delegation with whom he was meeting would be intimidated by the naked display of state power; in sightlines past him and out the windows, he arranged to have an RCMP paddy wagon and several mounted and armed officers standing at attention and staring back through the window.

During his tenure as prime minister, Bennett needed to deal with a number of strikes, many of which turned violent. With each unfortunate instance his disdain for violence and especially for the efforts of outsiders grew. A coal miners’ strike in Estevan, Saskatchewan, was particularly ugly. In September 1931, he received a number of reports about the growing unrest. He read that the leaders of the coal miners’ strike were not local men but members of the Communist Party, many of whom were from out of town and some from out of province. One such leader was James Sloan, who made impassioned speeches in which he encouraged men to stop at nothing to get what they wanted. Sloan and others planned a parade through town, but the municipal council saw trouble coming and voted against allowing a permit. Sloan ignored the council’s wishes and led the parade anyway. Many strikers said later that they would not have marched had they known that what they were doing was illegal. But march they did and when they were a block from the town hall the chief of police ordered them to stop and disperse. Soon voices were raised, then fists, then the local police and RCMP billy clubs. Bricks and bottles flew at the police as they sought to arrest the more belligerent of what had become a mob. The police were slowly backed against the steps of the town hall. Only then did they form a line and fire shots over the heads of those attacking them. When men continued to rush the police line, bullets were fired into them, with the order to aim low. Three striking miners were killed and several suffered leg wounds.

The Estevan riot initiated a spate of fifty-three resolutions, letters, and telegrams to the prime minister. One of particular note came from the National Unemployed Workers Association in Victoria. It called what happened at Estevan “bloody murder” and “a slaughter.” Its resolution stated in part, “This meeting recognises in this outrage the commencement of Bennett’s Blank Check Reign of Terror, by which he hopes to force the Canadian workers to accept without protest the capitalist attack upon the standard of living of the Canadian worker. . . . The end of capitalism has been hastened; the hysterical and murderous bourgeoisie cannot long hope to maintain their rule by perpetrating atrocities of this nature. LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS OF CANADA.”23

Another strike that informed Bennett’s attitudes involved miners in Corbin, British Columbia. They went on strike on January 20, 1934, demanding safer working conditions and improved pay. The strike went on and on and on. A year later, in January 1935, Bennett received a report stating that, according to the Workers Protective Association, the RCMP had viciously attacked workers who had been staging a peaceful and legal action. The police had first closed the highway so that no assistance or medical attention could reach the workers. Bennett received a number of resolutions that used harsh language condemning him and the RCMP. One from the Workers Protective Association of Princeton said, “This brutal attack upon working people signifies there is no limit to the extent your Department will go in its mad attempts to subjugate the toiling people to poverty and want.”24 Bennett’s reaction to the Workers Protective Association could probably have been predicted, but it can also be guessed that he would have been moved by the Women’s Auxiliary of Calgary writing him the very next day expressing, albeit in more polite language, a similar opinion of the police and his government’s actions.²⁵ Others wrote to Bennett calling the actions atrocities while still others used the words “terror” and “fascist” to describe the government and police. In all, 790 resolutions from various groups and individuals found their way to Parliament Hill. Not a single one supported the police or the government.

There was yet another violent clash between police and strikers that November. In Innisfail, Alberta, farmers went on strike demanding decent grading for their wheat and grain. The RCMP took strike leader George Palmer into custody, beat him, tarred and feathered him, and left him in a field. Farmers and others concerned with what had happened met in public halls the next day in twenty-two Alberta communities. In Calgary, a thousand people assembled to speak against the actions of the police. Each meeting sent a resolution to Bennett demanding action to rectify the problem and to condemn the RCMP.²⁶ Bennett responded perfunctorily to each piece of correspondence, revealing sympathy for pain suffered and regret for damage incurred. Unions and the RCMP both appeared to be losing control of themselves. The phrase “police riot” was entering the popular lexicon.

There were many other large, long, and bitter strikes involving, for instance, the Toronto Garment Workers, the Halifax Sewer Workers, and, in one that was sure to affect Bennett, the International Paper Union at the E.B. Eddy Company. His reaction reflected his thoughts on strikes and strikers. Eddy workers threatened to strike in early August 1935 if wage demands were not met. As a director and major shareholder in the company, Bennett wrote to company president Victor Drury suggesting that if a strike were forced upon the company, the public would rally behind management. He suggested that Drury tell a priest in Hull that he planned to shut the plant and reopen it with other workers. Drury was to let the priest attempt to get the men to call off the strike and, if he failed, to carry out the bluff.²⁷ The strike did not materialize.

VANCOUVER STRIKE

It was with his clearly formed and publicly articulated opinion of strikes and outside agitators, his suspicions about unions, his belief in the obligation of the state to protect law and order, and his conviction that the Canadian Communist Party represented a legitimate danger to the country all clearly established in his mind, that Bennett learned that the Vancouver strikers were receiving support from the Communist Party of Canada. Just days after they were released from prison, in November 1934, communist leaders Tim Buck and Sam Carr had travelled to Vancouver where they met with strike leaders. Four months later, Buck and Carr returned to the city, where they expressed their fulsome support for the strike in addresses before a mass meeting.

In April and May 1935, work in all BC relief camps slowed or stopped as nearly all of the men left. While some went back home, between one and three thousand did as the union had asked them to do and assembled in Vancouver. The union set up barracks at four downtown halls. Evans was in charge of arranging food and shelter as well as the political organization for the assemblage. He met with municipal and provincial political leaders as well as newspaper editors to urge support for the men.

Evans and other leaders demanded that the city pay relief to all the workers, but Vancouver’s mayor cried poor and refused. To raise money to feed the men, Evans organized a tag day where workers stood on street corners collecting donations and pinning a small piece of paper on donors’ lapels. In a single day, workers gathered an amazing $4,000.

In New Westminster, city council banned tag days, but Evans planned one anyway. The police chief tried to stop it by having a number of organizers arrested. Evans sent a hundred workers to storm the police precinct where their comrades had been jailed. The chief broke down and released them all. The tag day occurred. New Westminster was a moral victory for the strikers, but also it was seen by many as a turning point: with Wild West tactics, the strikers had, for the first time, broken the law. Meanwhile, pamphlets and posters were printed and distributed throughout Vancouver and the surrounding area trumpeting the strikers’ demands and gloating over their facing down the enemies of the working man.

By the middle of April 1935 there were approximately 1,500 strikers in Vancouver. Evans and the others organized rallies in public parks at which many clergy, municipal, and provincial leaders, as well as CCF and communist representatives, pledged their support to cheering throngs. Often there were spontaneous parades down streets or even through stores, as strikers chanted “End to Slave Camps” and “Work for Wages.”

Nearly every day the men would set out from what they called their divisional headquarters and parade around the city’s downtown core. Stores hired guards to stand at their thresholds to keep the marchers out. On April 26, a large group passing the Seymour Street entrance of the two-storey Hudson’s Bay Company store noticed that it was unguarded. So they swept in. Accounts from marchers, police, and shoppers as to what happened next differ, but the facts are that speeches were made, displays were ransacked, police and marchers clashed, shoppers had to scurry for safety, and arrests were made. Later, Mayor Gerry McGeer stood at the First World War memorial in Victory Square and, quite literally, read the riot act: disperse or face arrest. The strikers withdrew.

The next day, however, strikers were back with a renewed demand that city council grant them relief payments. To again press their case, to both Bennett and the city, they organized three simultaneous marches, which split the police. The tactic enabled them to take over the City of Vancouver Museum at Main and Hastings. As five hundred men occupied the building, strike leaders negotiated with McGeer, who finally relented and promised three days of food rations if the men would leave the museum undamaged.

The violations of the law, the marching, disruptions to businesses, and finally the disturbance at the Hudson’s Bay store and the occupation of the museum had robbed the strikers of a great deal of their public sympathy and support. And yet May 1, the day of labour’s traditional recognition of working peoples’ struggles and contributions, saw a huge demonstration of support. High school students and city workers were among those who joined a large parade down Burrard Street and cheered at a boisterous rally at the Malkin Bowl. The May Day parade showed that the public’s attitudes toward the strikers were waxing and waning. Battles were being won, but as overall goals remained unmet, the war was being lost.

At that moment Bennett was dealing with a number of other matters, including moving his New Deal legislation through Parliament and trying to push the Americans to increase trade. He also needed to decide upon a date for a federal election, which, despite the low and still-tumbling popularity of both himself and his government, the constitution demanded he soon call. And he was still recovering from a heart attack that he suffered in March that had all but removed him from the day-to-day operations of his government during April and May and left him constantly tired.

Despite the distractions and from his sickbed, Bennett focused upon a number of letters he and his cabinet had received from Vancouver’s mayor and BC’s premier. All begged for federal help. But Bennett had already decided that the best course of action would be to do nothing. For one thing, he had deemed that the responsibility for maintaining order rested with the city and the province. It was made clear to Premier Pattullo that if he believed he could no longer handle the situation, he would need to transfer all power to do so to the federal government. Bennett would then be able to take action in a constitutionally sound manner.28

On May 20, Bennett made his thoughts on the tense situation clear in a cable to Mayor McGeer, who had been sending him a number of alarming and sometimes threatening letters and telegrams. Bennett wrote that any man who wished to accept the conditions of the camps could do so, while any man who found the conditions unacceptable was free to leave. If they decided to leave, he explained, then their welfare became the responsibility of the province and city in which they resided.²⁹ McGeer may have been correct in his response that Bennett was failing to grasp the seriousness of the situation in Vancouver. The mayor tried again to urge the prime minister to understand that communists and outside agitators had stirred the situation to the point where he feared riots and widespread violence. Only through increased funding that no city and no province could handle without federal assistance could such terrible ends be avoided. He concluded with an ominous thought: “If you persist in attitude laid down in your telegram trouble is inevitable and responsibility must rest on you.”³⁰ Bennett was not moved.

Slim Evans and Richard Bennett, two intelligent and determined men, had reached an impasse. With neither willing to compromise, only one could win. Evans moved first. He recognized that the strike was falling apart. Between three to four hundred strikers had left, fed up with bad food, crowded quarters, and a lack of progress. Many headed for home while others returned to their camps. To stem the tide, a meeting was held in Hamilton Hall on May 30 in which he delivered a speech meant to rouse his followers; they must become more militant, he argued, or admit defeat.31 A vote was called and 70 per cent raised their hands in favour of continuing the strike. From the floor came a suggestion that they leave Vancouver, put all of the men on trains, and move the protest directly to Bennett in Ottawa. The idea was quickly adopted and plans began to be made. The On to Ottawa Trek was born.

THE TREK

The strikers left the city in three groups on the third and fourth of June. Many were demoralized upon their arrival at Kamloops when they discovered that nothing was prepared nor did anyone really seem to want them. As a camp was hastily established at a municipal park, many talked of abandoning the struggle, but Evans spoke persuasively about commitment and so not a single man left. During the afternoon many trekkers spread out and spoke to various people and groups about what they were up to, and that evening a rally was held at the park. The meeting won them support, food, tobacco, and even donations to cover future expenses. A number of young men joined the trek when it left the next morning. Kamloops taught the leaders a lesson. From that point on, advance men were sent ahead of the trekkers to incite the locals and inform the police.

The most talented advance man was a young Saskatchewan native named Matt Shaw. He was as determined as any of the strike leaders, but the secret of his success was his beguiling charm. For instance, in April, with the strike just under way, Shaw had arranged to corner Governor General Lord Bessborough on a Vancouver train platform. For ten minutes Shaw impressed upon His Majesty’s representative all of the problems and demands of the relief camp strikers. The two warmly shook hands at the end of the conversation with each wishing the other good luck. Shaw’s advance work, and his personality that made it possible, was indispensable.

Due mostly to Shaw’s efforts, two days later the strikers were welcomed in Golden, BC, with an enormous feast. Abundant pots of hot coffee and other drinks awaited. Hanging between two trees and suspended over a large fire was a bathtub filled with gurgling beef stew. They were similarly welcomed in Medicine Hat, where, like at every other stop, they were carefully watched by police but cheered by crowds offering food, clothing, and support.

In Calgary, they were bivouacked at the Exhibition Grounds, but the meals that Shaw had arranged failed to materialize. This led to trouble, ending with trekkers taking control of a provincial relief office and holding employees hostage until the city agreed to provide food and food coupons. Threats such as this became standard procedure. Shaw had developed a blackmailing technique that was proving quite effective. He would arrive at a city a couple of days in advance of the main party, meet with the mayor, and demand money and food coupons for each of his men. If granted, he promised they would stop but leave on the same train. If refused, he threatened to camp in the city, run tag days, and do whatever else was needed in order to secure food and other needs.32

There were a number of RCMP spies within the ranks of the trekkers who informed the prime minister that the trekkers’ operation was gaining strength as it moved. It was drawing support from the people of each city and town passed through, and additional numbers from relief camps and unemployed young men. Plans were being made for even more supporters who would be joining them in Winnipeg and Toronto before the final push to Ottawa.³³

The trek had begun to stir the public’s imagination across the land. Bennett was asked about it nearly every day in the House, but he stuck to his argument: he regretted that so many young men were falling under the spell of communists. He called those on the trains trespassers and noted that several communist societies, operating under various names, had been demanding to negotiate with him but that he had refused each offer.³⁴

In the first week of June 1935, the full cabinet discussed the situation at length and a consensus was reached: the trek was communist-inspired and led, it was wreaking havoc in every city it descended upon, and it should not be allowed to continue. The decision was made to end it. The best place to stop the trek, it was decided, was in Regina. The location made sense because Regina was the western headquarters of the RCMP, meaning that communications would be easier and reinforcements readily available. Letters were written informing the RCMP in Regina, the city’s mayor Cornelius Rink, and Saskatchewan’s Liberal premier Jimmy Gardiner. Gardiner expressed rage over Bennett’s decision that the trek would be stopped in his capital city. He wrote to Bennett pleading with him to allow the trekkers to move through his province.35 Bennett offered him no choice.

The plan was not secret. The next day, Minister of Justice and Attorney General Guthrie rose in the House and announced to the country that the trekkers were under the direction of communist elements; were trespassing on the trains; were attempting to disturb the peace, order, and good government of the country; and were breaking several laws, including Section 443 of the Railway Act. Therefore, he explained, the RCMP had been asked to stop them in Regina. They would be told to stop violating the law and to return to their homes or relief camps.³⁶

The announcement shocked many people. There was concern about Bennett having decided to stop the trek and about Regina as the site of the showdown because of the RCMP’s poor reputation in the city and province. In 1928, the Saskatchewan government had been forced by financial considerations to eliminate its provincial police and had asked the RCMP to take over policing duties. Three years later, the RCMP found itself embroiled in controversy when its officers used lethal force, killing three striking miners in Estevan. In 1933, a relief camp that had been set up in Saskatoon’s Exhibition Grounds was raided by the RCMP and in the riot that erupted several unemployed men were injured. A number of police officers were also hurt and one died from his wounds. Regardless of who was to blame for the confrontations and violence, by 1935 few in Saskatchewan or Regina harboured much love for the Mounties.

Meanwhile, the trekkers moved closer and closer. Their numbers continued to grow. On June 12, they were in Moose Jaw, where townspeople organized a parade and offered tents that had been set up on the sports field. And on they came. On June 14, they arrived in Regina.

Their welcome was like in most other towns. Clapping and cheering crowds met them at the station and more people lined the streets of a makeshift parade. Tents and food had been prepared at the Exhibition Grounds. It looked like it would be another triumphant stop on a long journey of increasingly exuberant success. The trekkers arrived 2,500 strong, and were soon joined by five hundred more strikers from the Dundurn Camp. The city afforded them relief, so that more food was made available. At a mass meeting, local communist, CCF, and union leaders spoke in support of their actions. Crowds cheered the trekkers the next day as they paraded downtown. Meanwhile, the RCMP finalized their plans and prepared their men.

It was high noon. One can almost hear the Ry Cooder music swelling with Bennett and Evans standing on a dusty main street in some spaghetti-western movie. But then, at the last minute, there was a reprieve. Bennett sent Minister of Railways and Canals R.J. Manion and Minister of Agriculture Robert Weir to speak with trek leaders. Manion was chosen due to the trekkers using the railways, and Bennett sent Weir because he was a Saskatchewan MP, well respected by westerners not only for his military service (he had served with distinction and was wounded at Passchendaele) but also because of his support for farmers and the West.

Manion and Weir met with a delegation for two hours on the evening of June 17. Manion sent a telegram to Bennett that evening reporting that the trek leaders had six demands. They wanted work that paid at least fifty cents an hour with union rates for skilled labour and specified daily, weekly, and monthly hours. They demanded that the compensation act cover all relief camp work and that first aid be available at all camps. They wanted worker committees formed in each camp and all camps to be removed from the purview of the Department of National Defence. They wanted a program of national unemployment insurance. Finally, they demanded that all relief camp workers be guaranteed the right to vote. They also wanted to speak directly with the prime minister.

Manion indicated to Bennett that the people of Regina appeared to be largely with the trekkers and that, in dealing with the situation, Gardiner’s government was ineffectual. He suggested that a cooling-off period might allow a peaceful resolution of the affair. Bennett approved the paying of first-class fares for the delegation to travel to Ottawa to meet with him and the cabinet. Meanwhile, trekkers who wished to stay in Regina would be fed at the federal government’s expense and those who chose to return to their homes or camps would be offered free train fares to do so. Several cables were exchanged between Ottawa and Regina until, late in the evening, Manion sent a final message noting with some surprise that the trekkers’ delegation had agreed to all of the conditions and would be coming to Ottawa.37

On June 22, eleven men walked into the dark-panelled cabinet room to meet with the prime minister and eleven members of his cabinet. The cabinet sat on one side of a large table with Bennett in the middle. Directly across from Bennett was Evans with his men and one woman — Margaret Richmond — on either side of him. If either man were intimidated by the other he did not show it. One of the more extraordinary meetings involving a Canadian prime minister was about to commence.

It all began politely enough. Bennett allowed Evans to speak at great length. His demands were listed, explained, and defended. Manion corrected a couple of points. Then Bennett weighed in. He asked the age and birthplace of each delegate, noting that only Evans was Canadian. He then suggested that each of their demands had either already been met or that they were based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of the relief camps. He accused the trek leaders of being irresponsible citizens in violating laws and in stirring others to do the same. James “Red” Walsh, leader of the Relief Camp Workers’ Union, snapped that he and the other leaders had done “their damnedest” to avoid breaking the law but that the government’s refusal to negotiate had led them to take the actions they had. If anyone was hurt, he said, it would be the government’s fault.

Bennett sounded very much the lawyer in replying that Walsh had just provided all the proof that was needed to establish that he, Evans, and the others had been prepared from the beginning to engage in illegal activities. Bennett then recalled that Evans had been sent to prison for embezzling funds from the union he had once led. Evans lost his temper and snarled,

You are a liar. I was arrested for fraudulently converting those funds to feed the starving, instead of sending them to the agents at Indianapolis, and I again say you are a liar if you say I embezzled, and I will have the pleasure of telling the workers throughout Canada I was forced to tell the premier of Canada he was a liar. Don’t think you can pull off anything like that. You are not intimidating me a damned bit.³⁸

It was an astounding outburst that proved the meeting was going nowhere. But in losing his temper, Evans had ceded victory to Bennett who carried on with the logical presentation of his case. He noted that Evans had been arrested a second time under Section 98 of the Criminal Code for leading miners in an illegal strike. Trek marshal and Scottish-born Jack Cosgrove began protesting Bennett’s concern over the fact that the delegates were foreign-born, or that Evans had a criminal record. That the trek was led by hotheaded, foreign-born outsiders, like so many of the other strikes with which the government had been dealing over the years, was exactly what Bennett was trying to establish for his colleagues. Except for Manion, who said little, cabinet members sat as silently as a jury, listening to the prime minister drawing damning testimony from the increasingly agitated witnesses before him. Cosgrove jumped to his feet and twice Bennett asked him to sit down. Again, a loss of temper, as always, led to a surrendering of the point at hand.

Bennett returned to his argument that in demanding work for wages the men were misinterpreting the purpose of the relief camps. He admitted that some abuses had crept into some camps and that they had been addressed, but he argued that the camps’ main function — providing housing, food, and useful activities for single young men — was being accomplished. With that established he said, “You cannot go and take the government by the throat and demand that anything that pleases your sweet desire will be done.”39

He then went point by point through the rest of the six demands, explaining how they were either unreasonable, beyond the scope of the federal government, or had already been addressed through legislated programs. For instance, he outlined the various programs the government had initiated to provide work for wages for unemployed Canadians. He spoke of public works programs that had been made available and stated that relief camp workers could leave at any time to take those jobs. With respect to camp committees, he said that any man in any camp was free to bring grievances to those running the camp, but that the committees the trekkers demanded would not be allowed, for they would only serve as vehicles through which propaganda that would encourage unlawful strikes and agitation could be dissembled. And regarding the demand that workers be given the right to vote, Bennett pointed out that any relief camp worker who met the regulations of the Franchise Act already had the right to vote. By the end, each and every demand of the trekkers had been carefully and fully addressed. Bennett concluded with a warning. He said, “That is all that can be said. I want to warn you once more, if you persist in violating the laws of Canada you must accept full responsibility for your conduct.” Evans simply said, “And you also.”40

Bennett understood the threat in Evans’s words. The prime minister responded,

In order that there be no misunderstanding you might make known to all those who are with you whether at Regina or elsewhere that they will be able to go back to their camps, and that as work develops on highways or on any public undertaking, to the extent to which the opportunity may offer, they will have the opportunity to work, but a continuance of illegal trespassing upon the property of the railways involving the interruption of mails, the loss of life, and injury to property will not be tolerated. Good day gentlemen.⁴¹

Evans then spoke more to his own people than to Bennett. He said that in raising the “red bogey” the prime minister had the “red horrors.” He said, “Our responsibility is we must take this back to the workers and see that the hunger programme of Bennett is stopped.”⁴² And with that they left. Good to his word, Bennett allowed them to return to Regina. The trekkers and the RCMP both prepared for the confrontation they knew would come.

Bennett rose in the House on June 24 and explained the cabinet’s meeting with representatives from what he called “the so-called marchers.” He began by telling the House that seven of the eight were foreign-born and that the leader had a long criminal record. He explained how their demands had either already been met or could not be met by his or any other government. He expressed sympathy for the many young men who were being exploited by men such as Evans, who sought only to further their own “sinister purposes.” Bennett again defended the temporary relief camps and said that while earlier problems had existed they had been fixed and that the camps had for some time been fulfilling the purposes for which they had been created. He explained that the government had offered the creation of a temporary camp to take care of those now assembled in Regina so that they would have work, food, and accommodation while arrangements were made for them to return home or to a relief camp of their choosing. Bennett concluded with the thought that had informed all of his decisions in the matter. He said,

. . . the government is fully seized of the seriousness of the situation and believes as firmly as it is possible to believe that the present movement of these marchers upon Ottawa in defiance of the law is in reality an organized effort on the part of the various communist organizations throughout Canada to effect the overthrow of constituted authority in defiance of the laws of the land. The government is determined to maintain law and order by all the means within its power and calls upon all law abiding citizens to assist to that end.43

In case anyone still failed to understand, Bennett repeated that the RCMP had been ordered to stop the trek. It would also assist the railways to ensure that no one illegally used the rails again.

THE RIOT

The first of July was Dominion Day. Evans and many of the same people who had been with him in Ottawa spent the afternoon meeting with Saskatchewan’s premier. Gardiner was still enraged with Bennett’s decision to stop the trek in Regina but shared his desire to end the standoff without violence, so he offered support for any who wished to leave or move to the temporary camp then being set up. He offered no false hope regarding the trekkers’ cause.

At eight o’clock that night, about five hundred trekkers and supporters from the city met in Regina’s Market Square. As Evans was addressing the crowd, three unmarked vans took up positions at the square’s perimeters. At the sound of a whistle the van doors flung open and RCMP officers wielding bats poured out. They charged the crowd and soon it was an orgy of screams and blood and bone-cracking blows. With the square quickly cleared, the trekkers tried to reassemble and reorganize on the adjoining streets, but mounted police who had been held in reserve moved in. As what had become a roiling, brawling riot spilled into the neighbouring streets, a number of storefronts were smashed and cars overturned. Makeshift barricades were thrown up and rocks rained down on the police as they charged. Soon the trekkers and others caught up in the melee were throwing not only rocks but bottles, pieces of metal, and anything else they could lay their hands on. A brigade was quickly assembled and some men gathered projectiles and brought them to the men at the barricades who immediately launched them at the police and their horses. There was tear gas. There were gunshots.

As the sun rose on Regina the next day, its glow revealed a horrible sight. The streets resembled a battlefield of smashed windows, overturned cars, the ruins of barricades, bits of tattered clothing, and, in places, the dark stains of spilled blood. More than a hundred people were in jail, including Evans, Shaw, and other leaders who were apprehended just minutes after it all began. Thirty were in hospital. Constable Charles Millar had been hit over the head with some sort of club and killed.

When the trekkers roused themselves at the Exhibition Grounds site, they saw that Mounties armed with Vickers machine guns surrounded them. Gardiner met with Evans, released on bail, and other trek leaders. Final plans were made to evacuate the men as quickly as possible according to the deal worked out with Bennett and Manion two weeks before. Within three days the Exhibition Grounds was empty and the men were on trains moving east and west. On a train heading back to Vancouver, an effigy of Bennett was constructed and hung outside the window. It flapped in the wind with a sign around its neck declaring that it was indeed Bennett who would rot in hell.

The day after the Regina Riot saw, not surprisingly, both Mackenzie King and Woodsworth on their feet in the House decrying all that the government had done to cause the tragedy. Bennett rose in the government’s defence and reiterated many of the same points that had been made before the riot occurred. He conveniently ignored the fact that the RCMP had started the melee and said that the violence was unfortunate but that it justified his government’s conviction that those who called themselves marchers were willing to use any means to bring about their foul ends. Further, the trek leaders were too powerful in swaying otherwise right-minded Canadians to employ methods far beyond what they would otherwise see as proper. He again outlined the purpose of the camps and noted that conditions were the same as at a well-run lumber camp, except even better, for education through Frontier College was encouraged and arranged. Bennett made the point that those in the relief camps had been working well until outside communist agitators entered and began organizing them based upon trumped-up charges of mistreatment. He said that by the time the strikers reached Saskatchewan it was no longer a strike or protest or sporadic uprising but “a revolutionary movement.” Also, he went on, the railway companies had asked the government for help. The three trains that left Vancouver to begin the trek had no effect on the proper operation of the railways and the delivery of mail, but by the time the trekkers were in Saskatchewan the railways and mail delivery were being seriously hampered. This disruption broke federal laws. Bennett compared himself to American president Grover Cleveland, who in 1894 had stepped in to end the Pullman Strike when it had similarly led to tampering with railways and the mail in Illinois. As in the United States, he concluded, illegal acts demanded action no matter who was doing them or the motive behind them. In such cases, the police and government had no option but to act.44

The story ends with one set of facts and the reports of two commissions. With respect to the facts, Bennett had been advised by Manion, Premier Pattullo, and several RCMP reports that the leaders of the Vancouver Strike and the Ottawa Trek were communists. They were. Arthur “Slim” Evans had been associated with the Communist Party of Canada before the strike and trek and would maintain his ties afterwards. A year after Regina, he was hired by the Communist Party to raise money and recruits for the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion, which was being organized to fight on the side of the communists against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Evans undertook a gruelling schedule of one-night stands, speaking in fifty-three British Columbia communities. Four others who were members of the delegation that met Bennett — Red Walsh, Peter Neilson, Paddy O’Neill, and Tony Martin — were also party members and involved in stirring interest in the war and support for the communists. All four volunteered and fought in Spain. O’Neill and Neilson were killed.

Mackenzie King agreed with Bennett that the strike and trek had been led by communists. Upon hearing of the Regina Riot, he had sat with trusted colleague Ernest Lapointe and determined that they had to be very careful in criticizing Bennett’s handling of the entire affair. They did not want to be seen as supporting the trekkers too vehemently lest they be branded as supporting communism. They elected to let Woodsworth lead the debate in the Commons.45

The truth was revealed in the commissions. The Royal Commission on Relief Camps, British Columbia, was chaired by the Honourable William A. Macdonald. It had been created by the British Columbia government to investigate relief camp conditions and it had submitted its findings just as the strike was beginning. The commission’s report criticized Bennett’s policy of having camp work done for free and providing only spending money. It stated that those leaving the camps had to do so with very little or no money in their pockets, which made life back in cities quite difficult and the men easy to exploit.⁴⁶ Ironically, however, given the fact that the state of the camps was the ostensible cause of the Vancouver Strike and all that followed, the report found that, beyond some easily rectified problems, camp conditions were fine. It found that the rules were clear and generally followed and that a great deal of valuable work was being done. The commission also concluded that accusations and complaints such as mail tampering, restricting the movement of workers in and out of camps, denying workers the right to vote, and poor or inadequate food, were unfounded. It had concluded that the camps were doing exactly as they had been designed to do and doing it quite well.⁴⁷

A second commission, the Regina Riot Inquiry Commission, was established by the Saskatchewan government. In November 1935, after the federal election that would return him to the Opposition side of the House, Bennett travelled to Regina and, following a series of meetings, felt compelled to telegram Justice Minister Lapointe. He reported that the commission had been taken over by communists and communist sympathizers and that the federal government had reversed an earlier commitment and appointed counsels for the RCMP who both were well-known Liberals. Lapointe laconically responded that the Saskatchewan government had appointed the commission and so the Mackenzie King government could do nothing about it.⁴⁸ Bennett was not reassured and maintained his belief that the commission was little more than a partisan hatchet job.

Despite Bennett’s concerns, the commission’s final report exonerated him. It stated that he and his government had acted responsibly, legally, and constitutionally throughout the incidents related to the Vancouver Strike, On to Ottawa Trek, and the Regina Riot. The RCMP, however, was skewered for actions that it took to initiate the riot. Evans, who testified at the hearings, was criticized for saying things that could not have been true, such as claiming to have witnessed the killing of the constable when at the time he was nowhere near the area in which it happened. Evans also testified that, despite all that he had said during the strike and trek, that camp conditions were not really a problem.49 He who had accused Bennett of being a liar had admitted to lying to incite his followers and had been caught lying again, but this time under oath.

Bennett had made it clear before, and stuck to his conviction later, that he believed it was his duty to do all that he could to protect society from violence and disorder. In carrying out that duty he had ordered the trek stopped, but he did not plan or direct the actions that the police took. He had been appalled by the violence but that had not dissuaded him from his belief that the government was right to act to protect society when that society is under threat. Only four days after the riot, he had written a letter to a Belleville reporter named W. Wilbur. In it, he used an argument and language similar to that which Pierre Trudeau employed to explain his use of the War Measures Act in October 1970. On the steps of the Parliament Building’s Centre Block, Trudeau told a reporter, “. . . it is more important to keep law and order in the society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don’t like the looks of an army. . . . I think that society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself. . . .”⁵⁰ Bennett was rather less strident but made the same point when he wrote, “It is not the intention of this Government to allow such demonstrations as will interfere with the maintenance of law and order throughout the country.”⁵¹

Bennett had been right about the strike and trek being led by communists and outside agitators who often used trumped-up charges regarding camp conditions to incite the men. And two commissions had found that he had done nothing improper in his handling of it all. Nonetheless, Bennett was hurt by the affair.

The perception that had been planted years before — and was based upon Bennett’s own well-known attitude toward strikes and his use of Section 98 — was that “Iron Heel” Bennett had little concern for the working man. Many saw his involvement in the strike, trek, and riot as support for an opinion of Bennett that they had already come to believe. The media didn’t help. The week after the Regina Riot, for example, the Winnipeg Free Press’s Arch Dale editorial cartoon showed Bennett picking out new clothes by looking at storefront manikin models of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. The display was named the “Dictatorship Outfitting Company.”52

Others interpreted Bennett’s actions and attitudes as motivated merely by political expediency, given that there was a federal election in the offing. Consider the editorial in the Regina Daily Star published ten days after the riot:

In my judgement that riot and its accompanying disturbance was deliberately planned and purposely brought about in order to provide a dying Government with a Red bogey. Mr. Bennett’s is not the first tottering Government which has instigated a war in order to win an election. . . . Blood has flowed in the streets of Regina in order that the Conservative press may declare that “our national life is at stake” and that Mr. Bennett is the “saviour of the nation.”⁵³

With polling not yet available, it is difficult to ascertain the degree to which Canadians at the time supported or opposed Bennett’s handling of the strike, trek, and riot. But Liberal papers and his political opponents were quick and ruthless in using it as ammunition against him in the election that followed only months later, with the blood on Regina’s streets still fresh in the nation’s collective memory.

HARRY STEVENS

On July 2, 1935, the day after the Regina Riot, the House debated the violence and the events leading to it at great length. In the evening session Harry Stevens delivered a long speech and supported much that Bennett had done in his creation of the camps. He explained that he had visited several of them and found conditions good and the men generally happy in their work. But over the course of the previous months much had changed in the Bennett-Stevens relationship. Stevens had gone from trusted colleague and cabinet minister to the prime minister’s bitter personal enemy and rogue Conservative MP, banished from both the cabinet and the caucus. Those changes coloured the rest of his assessment of Bennett’s handling of the strike and trek. Stevens said that the prime minister had overestimated the ability of communist leaders to brainwash young unemployed men. He argued that most of those striking in Vancouver and then riding the trains to Ottawa were intelligent young men who were not misled, misguided, or deceived. Stevens continued, swooping in for the kill, that Bennett’s suggesting that the trekkers were little more than communist dupes and then ordering the RCMP to stop them in Regina probably persuaded more young Canadians to become communists. Stevens said, “I say that as a creator of communism the Prime Minister takes the cake. I think he has done more to create communists in Canada than any other ten men, and that would include Evans, Buck and Collins or whoever they are.”54

These were harsh words indeed. The very public way in which the Bennett-Stevens relationship had soured was another reason for the prime minister’s troubles in the 1935 election. It is also another intriguing case study in considering Bennett as a leader and a man.

His name was Henry Herbert Stevens, although he was often referred to as H.H. by colleagues and as Harry by friends. He was a rather slight, fit, balding man, with deep-set dark eyes and thin lips that often curled into a slight smile that could both disarm and dismay. Stevens was born in England in 1887, but when he was a child his family emigrated to settle in Peterborough, Ontario. He enjoyed Sunday services at a downtown Methodist church presided over by Reverend Edwin Pearson, whose son Lester was also part of the congregation. When Stevens was only seven, the family moved to Vancouver. Stevens was never wealthy but he made a good living in the real estate and insurance business. He began his political career as a Vancouver alderman and, like Bennett, was first elected to the House of Commons in 1911. The two rookie MPs became close. For a time they roomed together, had offices adjacent to one another, and were deskmates in the House. Stevens served as Meighen’s minister of trade. He and Bennett did important committee work together and in 1927 Stevens assisted Bennett in his quest for the party leadership. In 1930, Bennett worked hard to find his old friend a seat and placed him in his cabinet as minister of trade and commerce.

Bennett’s troubles with Stevens began innocently enough. In September 1933, Stevens was driven from Toronto to a conference in Couchiching by Jim Walsh, the outspoken general manager of the influential Canadian Manufacturers Association. While en route Walsh regaled Stevens with stories of how small businesses were being hurt by big retailers that were able to buy in bulk and thereby sell products at retail prices that were less than what small independents had to pay for them wholesale. Stevens later learned that Montreal and Toronto sweatshops were flooding the market with clothing that also undercut small retailers, rendering their ability to stay in business tenuous at best.

Stevens took the issue to the prime minister and suggested that perhaps the government should do something about the pricing practices that he deemed to be unfair. Bennett was hesitant to act, noting that the big retailers were doing nothing illegal. Besides, regulating hours, pay, and work conditions for all workers, including those in sweatshops, was the responsibility of the provinces. Stevens left the meeting with the knowledge that Bennett wanted nothing to be done. For weeks after the meeting, however, he received numerous entreaties from various quarters providing more examples of inhumane sweatshops and predatory pricing practices. Stevens did as he had been told to do — nothing — but he continued to gather facts.

Bennett had been scheduled to speak at the National Shoe Retailers’ Association annual meeting in Toronto on January 15, 1934. As he was home in Calgary after spending Christmas with his sisters in Vancouver and had decided to remain there to tend to personal business, he contacted Stevens and asked him to speak in his place.

Stevens stood behind the podium, surveyed the crowd, and unleashed a maelstrom that would change Canadian history. He laid out, in excruciating detail, all of the facts about unfair retail pricing that he had been collecting. He explained how it affected the garment and dry goods trades but extended also into goods associated with the production of grain and livestock. Although he did not specifically name any particular business or business person as perpetrators, he stated emphatically that the large department stores were the worst offenders. Perhaps things would have been different had he stopped there — and his planned remarks indeed ended at that point. But maybe it was the adrenaline within him or the receptive audience before him that tempted him to go on. He pledged that the government would soon undertake a full-scale investigation of unfair pricing and production practices and that changes would be made to rectify the wrongdoing.

Stevens must have been pleased with the response to his speech from his audience that night, from the press the next day, and from politicians and business leaders across the country. As disparate a group as the premier of Ontario, Vancouver’s city council, and business groups such as the Calgary Merchants Association and the Toronto Retail Meat Dealers Association wrote to applaud the Stevens reform pledge. His office was inundated with appreciative mail from workers who told tales of toiling long hours producing goods for the big retailers and being paid pennies only to find the goods they made priced outrageously high in catalogues and stores. Small-business owners wrote of being unable to compete when their wholesale prices were higher than the retail prices at the big stores.55 The situation was the same as the one that small independent retailers today face when a competing big-box store comes to town.

Bennett did not share the enthusiasm of his minister’s new fans. Days after having delivered the incendiary speech, Stevens was called to the prime minister’s office and greeted with an explosion of fearsome temper. Bennett was understandably upset that his minister had simply contrived government policy on the fly without consultation with the caucus, cabinet, and most importantly, his boss. Bennett did not fire him but asked rhetorically, “I suppose you know what happens when a Minister of the Crown makes an announcement of policy without the consent of his fellow Ministers?”⁵⁶ Stevens declared that he understood and left the room.

The next day Bennett received Stevens’s letter of resignation. It was certainly not contrite. Stevens wrote, “. . . I fear that you have allowed certain problems of a more or less international or general character to so obsess your mind and your attention that it has made it impossible for you to appreciate some of these pressing Canadian problems which, while difficult of solution, are quite within the power of parliament.”⁵⁷

Bennett was presented with a complex problem. The issues Stevens was raising were worthy of concern and Bennett had agreed that the mess needed attention. But he was worried that Stevens was being used by powerful interests, such as the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and others, that were perhaps acting on selfish motives. For this very reason, Meighen and others advised him to be wary of believing the charges that Stevens had made in his January speech.58 Further, he worried about handling the situation in light of the false but unshakable stereotype that had dogged his political career and was affecting his unpopularity as prime minister: that he cared disproportionably for the interests of big business. In a letter to Ontario’s minister of mines, Charles McCrea, he noted his support for Stevens’s bringing the issue to national attention, but observed, “I am hopeful that . . . we may be able to take some action that will be helpful to the country generally and disabuse the minds of the people that we are thinking only of the large interests . . .”⁵⁹

Rather than accepting Stevens’s resignation, Bennett sought ways to retain his loyalty, serve the government, and address the issue at hand. Bennett spoke with Manion, who then met with Stevens, bringing with him the prime minister’s apologies for any slight or misunderstanding. Further, Manion was instructed to tell Stevens that Bennett had considered the price-spread issue that had sparked his resignation in the first place and believed that it deserved government attention. Manion said that Bennett believed that a royal commission, as Stevens had demanded, was not the best way to focus that attention but proposed instead the creation of a select committee of the House with Stevens as its chair. Stevens was happy with the idea, but, showing either enviable brass or blind arrogance, demanded that he should write the committee’s terms of reference. Manion returned to Bennett’s office with the news. The prime minister agreed.

The Stevens Price Spreads Committee began its work on February 16, 1934, and sat for fifty-three days of testimony. It quickly became evident that the big retailers, Eaton’s and Simpson’s in particular, would be in for a rough ride. Sad tales of women and children slaving in their kitchens for pennies while the clothing they made sold for high prices at stores in which they could not afford to shop touched the hearts of Canadians. The large retailers were savaged for using loss leaders, that is, offering a few well-placed or advertised items priced to sell at a loss to attract customers in the hope they would make additional purchases. In the wording of their questions to those brought before the committee Stevens and his colleagues did not attempt to mask their biases. Small-business people were treated with dignity and deference while big retailers were afforded little respect and their answers subjected to sarcastic rebukes. It was populism gone wild and as the press reported it across the country, Stevens became the little guy’s hero.

While all of this should have been positive news for Bennett, the committee placed him in a difficult position, for he was stuck in the middle of a suddenly split caucus. Those with a leaning toward the left wing of the party applauded the committee as the most populist and popular action the government had taken to date. The committee demonstrated the government’s support for Canadians who were trying to make ends meet but were being hammered by big business. For some, especially during economic hard times, it is nice to see the well-off, receiving a public rebuke. And for Conservative MPs, it was refreshing to finally be getting good press and receiving supportive mail.

Others in the caucus, however, complained that Stevens was out of control. In particular, Secretary of State Charles Cahan, Deputy Prime Minister Sir George Perley, and Minister of Finance Edgar Rhodes, each of whom had close ties to corporate Canada, beseeched Bennett to rein in their maverick colleague. They saw Stevens as a demagogue representing an ideological bent with which they fervently disagreed. Most vehement among them was Cahan, who saw the Depression not as the collapse of the capitalist system but as a necessary and inevitable correction. He never swayed from his belief in the value of self-reliance, hard work, and in laissez-faire capitalism as the best way to protect the opportunity for all to make the most of themselves. The role of the federal government was to butt out and let the markets handle temporary turbulent situations — this included the use of labour and pricing.60

Bennett found himself between the extremes of his party, and shaken by the fervour that Stevens was arousing with his populist appeal to the disenfranchised. As much as he had dedicated such a substantial amount of his talents and energy during his public career toward helping the working and middle class, Bennett was suspicious of those who sought to stir class strife. He had written in 1930, “The first step towards dictatorship was a prejudicial appeal to the little man.”⁶¹

Meanwhile, Stevens had established the terms of reference for his committee with such latitude that it was able to move far beyond the garment and retail industries. As it did so, it became clear that more time would be needed to hear all of the evidence that was deemed necessary to make a full report. Because a parliamentary rule dictated that a select committee could not continue after a recess of Parliament, Stevens asked that the committee be converted to a royal commission. There was a long cabinet discussion regarding the request. It was decided that the committee’s work had received such positive press that to shut it down would be perceived as the government’s trying to stop further investigation. On July 7, 1934, Stevens’s committee became the Price Spreads and Mass Buying Commission that he had wanted at the outset. Bennett had sided with the populists.

An explosion came on the second of August. The Winnipeg Free Press and the Toronto Star published accounts of a tempestuous speech Stevens had made the previous June in which he had personally lambasted Sir Joseph Flavelle. Flavelle had been born to a humble and troubled family in Peterborough, but by age forty-five was a millionaire. He was an enormously successful businessman who was a director of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, and founder and president of the National Trust Company. An active citizen, he was also chair of the Toronto General Hospital’s board of trustees and was on the board of the University of Toronto. Further, he had served during the war as the chair of the Imperial Munitions Board. Stevens knew all that and also knew that Flavelle was a generous contributor to and influential voice in the Conservative Party. He nonetheless attacked Flavelle for his controlling interest in the Robert Simpson Company — Simpson’s. With partners Harris Fudger and Alfred Ames, Flavelle had purchased Simpson’s in 1897 and turned it into a tremendously successful business. Stevens attacked Flavelle personally and accused Simpson’s of supporting price-fixing and unfair, unhealthy labour practices. The comments violated the law regarding parliamentary committees and royal commissions, as members are bound to keep their minds open and mouths shut until all evidence is heard. Even then they must first state their opinions with a written report that is properly tabled before Parliament.

Bennett was outraged that Stevens had made the inflammatory remarks and that he had sabotaged his own commission. But his anger grew as he realized that Stevens had not simply been overheard whispering to a colleague but had, in fact, expressed his ill-conceived thoughts in carefully prepared remarks which he then worked to publicize. The scandal began as a speech delivered to sixty-five Conservative caucus members known as the Study Club. A member of the Hansard staff had copied the speech in shorthand and later shown it to Stevens who made edits to the copy. Brigadier General Stewart, MP for Lethbridge, Alberta, was chair of the Study Group and he made copies for each member, taking care to mark each as confidential. But it did not stop there. Several members asked Stevens for more copies. Stevens then asked the Bureau of Statistics to make three thousand copies and personally paid for the printing. However, he made no request regarding confidentiality. Consequently, the bureau manager followed standard operating procedure and sent twelve copies to Stevens’s office and copies to all those on the usual mailing list, which included all MPs, senators, party supporters, and all of Canada’s newspaper editors.

Among those who eventually received a copy of the pamphlet and immediately contacted Bennett to express righteous indignation was Sir Joseph Flavelle. He was furious that a minister of the Crown had publicly accused him and his company of immoral and perhaps criminal behaviour. Flavelle demanded that Bennett do something about the loose cannon firing wildly from the Conservative decks. Bennett lamely suggested that he sue the newspapers for slander and promised nothing.

But the second Bennett hung up the phone he called Stevens. He curtly expressed his displeasure at both the speech and its distribution. Stevens relented only slightly by claiming somewhat weakly that he had never intended for it to be issued as it was. Bennett extracted a promise from Stevens that no more copies would be made or mailed.

That Bennett clearly understood the depth of the trouble in which Stevens had placed the government was expressed in a letter he wrote to Senator James Haig, in which he complained, “The difficulty is that the statements in the document are incorrect, and when they are corrected it places the Minister in a very difficult position and the Government in a worse one . . . there is never any difficulty in facing facts, but it is perfectly clear that if we seek justice we must do justice. . . .”62

Bennett was left with the same situation he had found himself in with Stevens’s resignation letter. If he fired his minister he would be accused by the Liberals and the Liberal press of getting rid of a man who was fighting for the little guy against the powers of corporate Canada. On the other hand, if he allowed Stevens to carry on he would be excusing his minister’s flagrant disregard for fairness and balance as well as parliamentary rules. Further, a number of people, such as Flavelle, would be incensed by the fact that Bennett was standing by a man who had brought such damage to themselves and their companies.

The timing was such that the situation did not need to be immediately addressed. Since it was summer, Parliament was not in session and so the Opposition did not have question period available to them to focus their attacks and the attention of the country. Further, Bennett was scheduled to sail to Europe to attend a meeting of the League of Nations in The Hague. Today, with the media ravenously devouring public people in its frantic need to feed the monster of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the Stevens scandal would play out much differently. But before Watergate changed the rules, cable changed the needs, and technology changed the means, Bennett had the luxury of literally sailing away from the problem. It did not follow him. But it waited.

The first cabinet meeting upon his return was a stormy one. At the October 25, 1934, meeting, Bennett expressed regret that the Stevens speech had been made, that it had been copied and distributed, and further that the speech had contained what had subsequently been proven to be errors of fact in the sections defamatory to Simpson’s and Flavelle. Bennett demanded that Stevens’s first action at the resumption of the commission hearing must be an apology for what he had done and a statement correcting the factual errors. Stevens looked slowly around the silent room and saw not a single cabinet colleague ready to support him. He reacted with a slow boil and asked for a day to consider whether he would be prepared to do as asked. Saying no to a prime minister is an option of which few ministers ever avail themselves.

Over his coffee the next morning Stevens found, on the front page of his Ottawa Citizen, an accurate and detailed account of everything that had been said at the cabinet table the day before. Bennett’s demand of an apology and correction was there for the country to see. Stevens assumed that Cahan had been the leaker, but the guilty party was never definitively ascertained. Who had broken cabinet solidarity did not really matter; the damage had been done.

That afternoon saw Bennett glaring at his cabinet ministers while Stevens’s chair sat conspicuously empty. Bennett held in his hand yet another letter of resignation from Stevens. The letter announced his desire to relinquish his cabinet post and chairmanship of the Price Spreads Commission. This time Bennett granted his old friend’s wish. Bennett then took the time to read aloud a long letter that he had composed to Stevens that morning. It outlined all of the mistakes Stevens had made from the day the price-spreads issue was first raised at the Couchiching speech, to the present. Ministers sat in stony silence while the prime minister read the lengthy letter. They offered no comment when he finished.

Bennett had his letter delivered to Stevens, who then composed one of his own. Again showing his unwillingness to adhere to normal political practices, Stevens released his letter to the media. Stevens denied that he had resigned, insisting that he had been fired. Bennett would not be called a liar, so he released both the resignation letter and his response. He laid the entire blame for the scandal on Stevens, accusing him of ignoring the principles of British justice and fair play and of knowingly publishing inaccuracies and refusing to correct them.63 Stevens replied with yet another letter that defended his actions while portraying himself as the champion of the working man standing against faceless corporate power. To be sure that he would hurt the man who had hurt him, Stevens also released his letter to the press.

All of Canada saw the depths to which the two former colleagues had fallen. Bennett’s government, already much maligned, seemed to be falling apart. Meanwhile, Bennett demonstrated that while Stevens had acted inappropriately and had earned his punishment, the government still recognized the importance of the work that the now-disgraced minister had begun. He appointed William Kennedy, a Winnipeg MP, to assume the chairmanship of the Royal Commission. In November, New Brunswick’s Richard Hanson was appointed the new minister of trade and commerce.

While the appointments meant the important work of the ministry and commission would proceed, the political storm surrounding Stevens, including whether he should remain a member of the Conservative caucus, continued to swirl. He had become a dangerous distraction. While he blamed Cahan for causing his departure, he pulled few punches whenever asked about Bennett. He told one reporter who encouraged a resolution of the spat, “Ye shall not hitch an ox and an ass together.”⁶⁴ There was too much important work to do and Bennett and the party were already unpopular enough without the Stevens scandal suggesting to Canadians that, besides apparently being unable to solve the riddle of the Depression, the prime minister could no longer even control his own cabinet and caucus. And yet the two stared eyeball to eyeball and nothing was done to resolve it.

The impasse continued through the winter of 1934. The government’s popularity continued to slide while Stevens was hailed by many in the press and even many Conservative Party stalwarts as a man of the people. Bennett delivered his New Deal radio speeches in January 1935 and promised, among other things, to shape policy and legislation on the findings of the Price Spreads Commission that, he reminded Canadians, he had initiated and seen to its conclusion. But in the shadow of an impending election, Bennett’s popularity continued to decline as Stevens’s rose. Bennett was told that reconciliation was essential for the legislative and electoral success of his government.65 But he still refused to budge.

Finally, Manion, Minister of Immigration and Colonization Wesley Gordon, and Postmaster General Arthur Sauvé grew frustrated with the poisonous situation and took matters into their own hands. They approached Vancouver MP Leon Ladner, who besides sharing Stevens’s hometown was well known as a conciliatory man, to speak with both Bennett and Stevens. He was to see if a rapprochement could be arranged for the good of the government and party.

Ladner met first with the prime minister and after some small talk mentioned that he had heard that Stevens’s daughter Sylvia was terminally ill with colitis. Bennett exploded with rage and pounded his large desk at the mere uttering of Stevens’s name. He did not even mention poor Sylvia. Ladner sat patiently waiting for the storm of anger to pass, then bravely suggested that party whip Tom Simpson needed the prime minister’s instructions as to whether Stevens should be invited to the caucus meeting that was scheduled to convene in three days. Ladner argued that the party would benefit from Stevens being invited, for if he chose not to attend, at least the prime minister would look magnanimous. Bennett’s first reaction was renewed anger. He said that Stevens had caused him irreparable harm.⁶⁶ But then he stood and for several moments stared silently out the large window overlooking the Parliament Hill lawns. One can only imagine his wrestling with the personal and political considerations that tore him from one option to the other. Finally he turned and in a quiet voice said that Stevens should be both invited and welcomed.

Ladner immediately made his way to Stevens’s office. Stevens was in an ugly mood, which did not improve when Ladner asked if he was planning on attending the caucus meeting. Stevens huffed that he had not been invited. Ladner then made his exact argument in reverse. He said that Bennett had invited him and that the former minister would appear fair and generous if he were to accept. Stevens played hard to get and insisted that he had not been formally invited. It was a petulant standoff.

Three days later there was palpable tension in the caucus room as members shared the normal chats before the prime minister entered and business began. There were audible sighs of relief when Stevens entered and took a seat inconspicuously in the corner. Minutes later, Bennett strode past the reporters who had gathered outside the caucus room door. He swept into the room and took his seat at the front, arranged his files before him, and called for the first order of business. As the meeting began and the first issue was being addressed, Stevens suddenly rose and, without a word, left the room. With the slamming of the door, the Conservative Party was torn asunder.

Stevens later explained to Ladner that when Bennett ignored him, he waited fifteen minutes before deciding that he could no longer endure the humiliation. Bennett later said that he had entered the room and not seen Stevens and, concerned with the issues of the day, merely started the meeting as usual. He swore that the first time he saw Stevens was when he rose and left. If he had seen him earlier, he said, he would have approached him and shaken his hand. Ladner later wrote, “Perhaps it was the Whip, who had sent out the invitation to Stevens and should have taken great care to be present, or have someone present to make sure that each of these able and distinguished leaders in the Conservative Party knew that the other was present in caucus, and that the party’s future might depend upon a hand-shake and a smile.”67

Perhaps Stevens should have holstered his petulance. Maybe Bennett should have tried harder and recognized the importance of stroking the man’s ego for the good of the party. But it was too late. Regrets and would-have-beens mattered little as the next day’s headlines screamed that the Conservative Party was broken. It would take a generation to mend.

*

With all hopes for reconciliation dashed, Stevens repaired to Vancouver to, for all intents and purposes, sulk. In the spring he was told by caucus chair John McNickle that he could do a great service to the party, to the leader, to himself, and to the country, if he would return to caucus. More than that, McNickle reported that seventy-two MPs had signed a letter stating that they would support him in the next leadership race. On at least three other occasions Stevens was approached by Rhodes, Gordon, and Manion, who assured him that Bennett’s days were just about over and that he would have their support in replacing the old man. Meanwhile, an underground movement began with Stevens’s tacit approval. Small-business people in ridings across Canada organized a whisper campaign and people were urged to write to their Conservative MPs urging support for Stevens as Bennett’s successor.68

At the same time, Stevens was entertaining offers to leave the party. A group of businessmen including Garment Manufacturers president Warren Cook and Montreal printer Thomas Lisson met Stevens in Ottawa and tried to convince him to lead a new party. Stevens was flattered. He was even more tempted when other business leaders approached him, including the CPR’s Sir Edward Beatty and multi-millionaire financier and Conservative stalwart Sir Herbert Holt. Beatty and Holt put $3 million on the table for Stevens to betray the Conservatives and start his own party. Stevens again demurred.

Much of the move toward Stevens was inspired not only by disappointment in Bennett’s performance as leader and prime minister, but also by the rumours that had been circulating about Bennett’s wishing to retire. Unusually for Ottawa, this time popular rumours were actually true. In May 1935, emerging from his period of convalescence following his heart attack, Bennett had, in fact, decided to retire from public life. He had worked too hard for too long and his health had suffered. He was tired. Upon his return from King George’s Silver Jubilee celebrations he had approached both Edgar Rhodes and Arthur Meighen about succeeding him. Both had said no. Rhodes had already decided to leave politics himself, partly due to his grief over the recent death of his wife. Meighen was happy in the Senate and had no desire to return to the leadership of a divided party in the midst of Canada’s worst economic calamity. Bennett knew that if he left he would be opening the door for Stevens to succeed him and he was having trouble stomaching that eventuality.

On June 19, 1935, surrounded by talk of replacing him, Bennett was moving important legislation through the House and directing Herridge’s trade negotiations with the Americans. Meanwhile, the On to Ottawa strikers waited in Regina as Slim Evans and his colleagues were about to arrive in Ottawa. Stevens chose that day to publicly confront Bennett. Stevens had risen to slam legislation that he claimed paled next to the promises that the prime minister had made in a series of radio addresses the previous January. Bennett rose and in a voice and, with a passion that reminded some of the days when he was called “Bonfire” Bennett, he tore into his old friend. He accused Stevens of being irresponsible in demanding legislation for which there was no widespread support and which would clearly be deemed unconstitutional. Bennett accused him of being a demagogue and promising Canadians things he knew he could not deliver. He questioned Stevens’s plans, his work, his principles, and his character. He said, “If the people of the country have been led into the belief that this parliament can pass any kind of legislation it likes regardless of the constitution then the age of lawlessness is upon us.”69

When Bennett took his seat it was to a standing ovation from every member of the government benches. The Opposition sat stunned. There have been few times in Canadian history when a leader, let alone a prime minister, levelled such a long, articulate, and devastating attack on a member of his own party — and this one a former friend and colleague.

That night, buoyed by the positive reception for his declaration of war on not only Stevens but upon any who were contemplating joining the maverick, Bennett attended a party caucus dinner. In his speech following dessert, he noted the rumours of the political backstabbing regarding Stevens possibly replacing him or forming his own party, and he dismissed them. He claimed that his experience had taught him that it was unwise to believe rumours. He then made it clear that the fight with Stevens had ended his contemplation of retirement. The prime minister assured all that he had completely recovered his health and that he was looking forward to leading the party to victory in the next election. When reporters later asked about his future, Bennett angrily snapped, “I’ll die in the harness rather than quit now.”⁷⁰

So Stevens and Bennett were as two bulls in the barnyard: too obstinate, too brave, or perhaps too proud or dumb to forgive or make up. There is a great deal that Bennett could have and should have done differently, but he was handling himself much as several of his fellow leaders would in similar situations. In June 2002, for example, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was contemplating retirement after a long and storied political career that included two majority governments, but he faced a recalcitrant finance minister whose poorly hidden leadership ambitions were splitting the Liberal caucus. The challenges to his leadership, especially from Paul Martin, but also from others who were testing the waters at the time, stirred his fighting spirit. He decided to fight another day. In his memoirs, Chrétien wrote, “. . . I was damned if I was going to let myself be shoved out the door by a gang of thugs. By trying to force me to go, they aroused my competitive instinct, ignited my anger, and inadvertently gave me the blessing I needed from Aline [his wife] to fight a third term.”71 He remained leader and won a third straight majority.

Perhaps in these matters Bennett was even more like another millionaire bachelor who came to the prime minister’s office with a reputation for intelligence leaning toward arrogance. Pierre Trudeau was similar to Bennett in many ways: he was a shy, introspective man in a profession that demanded personal interactions that he could pull off but that often appeared forced and unnatural. They were both introverts in an extrovert’s game. In the fall of 1975, Finance Minister John Turner was upset that Trudeau was affording him and his agenda inadequate support and decided to leave cabinet. One is tempted to picture Trudeau’s explanation of what followed as Bennett speaking of Stevens. Trudeau might have been able to talk Turner into staying, but he allowed the resignation to stand. In his Memoirs Trudeau observed,

You can tell me I handled it badly, tell me I should have got down on my knees and begged him to stay. But that’s not the way I saw politics, then or now. Politics is a difficult game and you have to have your heart in it. And if his heart wasn’t in it for one reason or another . . . or because I was his leader, then perhaps it was right that he leave politics. Another type of leader might have handled it differently, but I have always believed that if an adult has thought carefully about his future, then he knows what is best for himself.⁷²

Perhaps so late in his term and with the core issue such a blatant breach of protocol, Bennett was simply unable to summon the fortitude necessary to address the emotional needs of colleagues in order to maintain support and loyalty. But this instance cannot be used to make the point that this was a consistent weakness. There is a good deal of evidence suggesting that Bennett understood well the importance of dealing with his MPs in a gentle and supportive manner in ways that would have done the master, Sir John A., quite proud. Consider one of many examples. Following a young MP’s maiden speech, Bennett penned a note stating, “I am so sorry that I did not see you before you left. I wanted to talk to you about the speech which you made the other evening when I was out of the House. It was a most moving appeal and expressed the ardent convictions of a youthful idealist, with a power rarely equalled.”73 Bennett then went on to comment on each of the young man’s salient points. This note was not written by a man unaware of the importance of such communications or incapable of involving himself in the art of supportive, empathetic leadership.

The Stevens debacle hurt Bennett in several ways, one of which was that it allowed the perception to develop that the prime minister had been upset not with his wayward minister but with the work and thrust of the Price Spreads Commission. The accusation was made that he was cutting his old colleague loose because Stevens was flying too close to the sun, which housed many of Bennett’s high-powered corporate friends. Somehow lost in the rancour and unfortunate messiness of the situation was that, as Bennett often reminded people, it had been he who had authorized the investigations in the first place. Further, as early as the 1930 Imperial Conference, it had been Bennett who brought sweatshop labour and slavelike wages forward as both moral and economic issues. They needed to be addressed, he had argued, not only because it was right, but also in order to level the playing field between countries that were to be involved in fair and freer trade.

The Price Spreads Commission’s final report was left for staff to complete. As secretary to the commission, Lester Pearson had worked diligently in organizing research material for the commissioners and in later synthesizing all the written and oral submissions into manageable and comprehensive formats. He also took the lead in compiling and writing much of the final report.

The Royal Commission report laid out in excruciating detail the degree to which Canadian economic power had become concentrated in just a few hands. Political economist Wallace Clement would later dub those who held such concentrated wealth and power Canada’s “corporate elite,” whose remarkable clout was enhanced, protected, disguised, and exerted through a web of interrelated corporate directorships.74 The Price Spreads Commission confirmed that those exerting linked and massive power did so in ways that led to unfair competition, pricing, wages, and working conditions. In so doing, the report served as an important analysis of and warning about the evolution of the modern Canadian economy in particular and society as a whole.

When the Price Spreads Commission’s final report was presented, Bennett was pleased with the work that had been done and the recommendations that had been made. He forwarded it to the Justice Department with the instruction that it was to draft legislation to implement every one of the report’s recommendations that were deemed constitutional. As a result, a number of bills were drafted that would be brought to the House the next spring. Many of those bills would form the core of what became known as Bennett’s New Deal. Perhaps the most important among them was the 1935 Companies Act that addressed unfair pricing practices, working conditions, holiday time, and minimum wages.

The legislation being created demonstrated once more Bennett’s belief that the ideas Stevens had first presented as worthy of discussion in his January 1933 speech were indeed important. The two were in fundamental agreement in terms of not only policy but also with respect to the Tory principles upon which the ideas and legislation rested. Rather than politics, it was pride and ego that fuelled their split. It became personal and it became nasty. When Stevens’s daughter died in December 1934, Bennett neither attended the funeral nor sent a card.

Both shared a responsibility for splitting the Conservative Party when in mere months it would be going to the people to seek a renewed mandate. Both men were strong. Both men were stubborn. At least one of them should have been stronger.