1. 1930s: The Great Depression

2. What was life like during the Great Depression?
Inquiry Question
What was life like during the Great Depression?

3. The Stock Market Crash: 1929
September 3: Stock prices peaked and then suddenly fell causing panic and selling
October 24: Newspapers reported that millions of shares were sold – the market drops again
October 29: “Black Tuesday”- investments are now useless and people are bankrupt

4. Causes of “The Great Depression”
Black Tuesday
Overproduction of the 1920s: there was now no money to buy goods, so production halts
Layoffs & Unemployment: no need for goods means no need for jobs
Dependency on Selling to the U.S.
Buying on Credit: people used credit in the 1920s and could not pay off debts

5. What Was Life Like in the Depression?
No Homes, No Food
People had bought homes on credit and could not afford to pay it back
Mortgages and rent couldn’t be paid which caused evictions or repossession of homes
People sold everything just to survive

6. “Bennett Buggy”
People could no longer afford gasoline and some hitched horses to cars for transportation
Relief Lineups
Municipal governments, as well as charities and churches, tried to supply help to those in need.

7. What Was Life Like in the Depression?
No Jobs
Companies and farms were going out of business when the stock market crashed – people became desperate
People begin writing to Prime Minister R.B. Bennett asking for help…

8. Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett
Conservative Party
Won the 1930 campaign against W.L. Mackenzie-King who had been Prime Minister from (with the King-Byng disruption in the middle)
Took advantage of a mistake Mackenzie-King made in a campaign speech and ran with it, used it against him
Canadians were looking for change and help through the Depression and Bennett promised to “end unemployment”
He would lose to Mackenzie-King in 1935 after a last-ditch attempt at winning the people over with a “New Deal” much like President Roosevelt’s in the U.S.
PM from

9. What Was Life Like in the Depression?
Letters to Prime Minister Bennett
Dear Sir, I am writing to see if their is any help I could get. As I have a baby thirteen days old that only weighs  one pound and I have to keep in cotton Wool & Olive Oil,  and I havent the money to buy it, if their is any help I could get their will be two votes for you next election  Hoping to hear from you soon Yours Truly, Mrs. Jack OHannen  Murray Harbour, PEI
Bennett sent the young mother five dollars - enough money to cover groceries for about a month.

10. Important People, Places and Things
What Was Life Like in the Depression?
Important People, Places and Things
“Black Tuesday”(1929)
“Bennett Buggies”
R.B. Bennett