75 Years of Building Community & Changing Lives: United Way/Centraide Ottawa’s Story

PRELUDE / 1920s — The Vikings, Canada’s first talking movie, is filmed. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and National Film Board are established. Works by the Group of Seven attain widespread national acclaim. The Supreme Court of Canada is built and the Canadian National Railway — a symbol of national unity — is designed and constructed. Like other industrialized nations, Canada is devoted to the pursuit of modernity: modern buildings, modern transportation, modern thinkers and modern medical practices. It is a period of intense nation-building of both infrastructure and identity. In the latter part of the decade, Canada stares down the lens of the Great Depression, a pivotal event in the country’s social and economic history in the decade to come.

It is a time of glory, optimism, growth — and then despair.

Growth: Major construction projects are under way in the country’s capital: the old United States Embassy (1931-32), the Bank of Montreal (1930-34), the Bank of Canada (1937) and the Central Post Office (1937). Canada also grows socially: three months after the famous Persons Case gives women the right to hold a seat in the Senate, Cairine Raey Wilson is appointed to the Senate (February 15, 1930). Calls for a national medicare system are being heard across the country (1934).             

Despair: The monumental stock market collapse four years earlier sets off a chain of events that plunges Canada — and the world — into a decade-long depression. Across the country, one-quarter of the working population (primarily males) is unemployed, businesses everywhere close, corporate profits became corporate losses and countless families lose everything. In 1936 in Ottawa — at the height of the Depression — the first-ever Christmas Exchange is unable to provide gift certificates to 289 families because demand is so great. In fact, in 1939 the Exchange receives 400 more applications for gift certificates than in 1938.

Optimism: The Great Depression triggers a “new” way of looking at the economy, bringing into stark reality the ground-breaking notion that the federal government has to play a more active role in the economy and to take steps to create a social safety net for its citizens. People everywhere say that what is needed are things like a minimum hourly wage for everyone in all workplace settings, a standard work week, and health care and unemployment insurance programs.