On-To Ottawa Riot

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Write up Template: my argument Philip It is clear that the trekkers are to blame for the On-To Ottawa Treck and the Regina Riot that followed it because it is evident that Trekker misunderstood Bennett and his intention and overreacted. Bennett did what he had to do when he established relief camps but the trekkers did not see the necessity of relief camp and overreacted. The relief camps were policy that Prime Minister Bennett created out of necessity from economical crisis. On March 4, 1934, Hon. D. M. Sutherland, the Minister of National Defence, clearly stated in the Canadian Radio Commission's System that the single unemployed men lacked “prospects for employment” besides lacking “proper shelter, food and clothing.” He also stated …show more content…

According to the Prime Minister Bennett, 70000 homeless, unemployed young people were “roaming to and fro across the country, particularly on freight train, and are becoming menace to the peace and even safety of many communities of along the rail way.” Single homeless men were unattached, independent, and had tendency to spend time as groups causing trouble, but they were also lazy, and susceptible to a rising Communist movement. Single homeless men cause much trouble that “as early as the autumn of 1929, city officials in prairie cities had determined that unemployed single men already represented a serious problem.” Saskatoon’s finance committee once reported that the city had many single men who were without food and a shelter and if work could not be provided for them by individual effort, the only other option available was to arrest them as vagrants and put them in jail, and wished that such an alternative might force single homeless to leave the city. The problem of groups of unemployed single men congregating in cities became so serious that city officials considered them as “pests”, “agitators of worst type” and “potentially dangerous”. The city authority used various methods to cope with the threats posed by single unemployed men, including simply cutting them from the relief rolls altogether and hoping they might leave for their own accord. One must note that the city officials avoided responsibility for relief for unemployed single men in the hope that single unemployed men who caused substantial problems for them would leave their cities. Therefore, the Bennett government had to take responsibility for the relief of single unemployed

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