July 1, 1935: The Regina Riot

July 1, 1935: A confrontation between Canadian troops and unemployed demonstrators results in 2 deaths. It becomes known as the Regina Riot.

The Great Depression that began with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 led to the Canadian federal election of July 28, 1930, and the defeat of the Liberal Party. William Lyon Mackenzie King was out as Prime Minister, and Richard Bedford Bennett, Leader of the Conservative Party, was in.

Installed in the national capital at Ottawa, Ontario, R.B. Bennett had sought to stimulate the economy during his first few years through a policy of high tariffs and trade within the British Empire. This didn't work, and voters turned against the Tories.

Bennett had not been in charge when the Depression began, but, like American President Herbert Hoover, he was seen as doing nothing, or at least too little, to alleviate the dire economic conditions. Hitching a horse up to your car, because you couldn't afford gasoline but you didn't dare sell your car, earned the vehicles the nickname Hoover wagons in America. In Canada, they were known as Bennett buggies.

The Bennett government ordered the Department of National Defence to organize work camps where single unemployed men were used to construct roads and other public works at a rate of 20 cents per day. After the 1932 U.S. Presidential election, new President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted similar programs, including the Works Project Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

But the men in the Canada relief camps were living in poor conditions with very low wages. They decided to unite and, in 1933, led by Arthur "Slim" Evans, created the Workers' United League. The WUL helped the men organize the Relief Camp Workers' Union. As Bennett stalled as much as he could, refusing to call an election sooner than he legally had to on October 14, 1935, the RCWU called for a strike on April 4, 1935.

The strikers' demands were: “(1) that work with wages be instituted at a minimum of 50 cents per hour for unskilled workers and trade union rates for skilled labour on the basis of a six-hour day, a five-day week with a minimum of twenty work days per month; (2) that all workers in the camps be covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act and that adequate first aid supplies be carried on the jobs at all times; (3) that the National Defence and all military control with the system of blacklisting be abolished; (4) that democratically elected committees be recognized in every camp; (5) that there be instituted a system of noncontributory unemployment insurance; (6) that all workers be given their democratic right to vote; (7) that Section 98 of the Criminal Code, Sections 41 and 42 of the Immigration Act and all vagrancy laws and anti-working class laws be repealed."

With no action taken, they decided to take their grievances to the federal government. On June 3, 1935, hundreds of men began boarding boxcars headed east in what became known as the "On-to-Ottawa Trek." The protesters reached Regina (that's "REJ-ih-nah," not "Reh-JEE-nah"), Saskatchewan on June 14.

Three days later, they met with 2 federal cabinet ministers: Robert Manion, Minister of Railways and Canals; and Robert Weir, Minister of Agriculture. They invited 8 elected representatives of the protest, including Slim Evans, to Ottawa to meet Bennett, on the condition the rest of the protesters stay in Regina, where a large contingent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was stationed. The remaining trekkers stayed in the stadium located on Regina Exhibition Grounds, with food and shelter supplied by townspeople and the Saskatchewan Provincial government.

The meeting was held on June 22, and it was a disaster. Bennett called Evans an "embezzler." Evans called Bennett "a liar." The delegation was escorted out, and arrived back in Regina on June 26. Attempts of the Trekkers to travel east by car or truck or train were thwarted by RCMP. A public meeting was called for July 1, in Market Square in Germantown to update the public on the progress of the movement. It was attended by 1,500 to 2,000 people, of whom only 300 were Trekkers. Most Trekkers decided to stay at the exhibition grounds.

At 8:17 PM on July 1 -- the 68th Anniversary of Canadian independence -- the police, unprovoked, charged the crowd with batons from all 4 sides. The attack caught the people off guard before their anger took over. They fought back with sticks, stones, and anything at hand. Mounted RCMP officers then started to use tear gas and fired guns. Driven from the Square, and with the RCMP blocking the roadway back to the Stadium grounds, the battle continued in the surrounding streets for 6 hours.

Police fired revolvers above and into groups of people. Tear gas bombs were thrown at any groups that gathered together. Plate glass windows in stores and offices were smashed, but with one exception, these stores were not looted, they were burned. The Trekkers who had attended the meeting made their way individually or in small groups back to the exhibition stadium where the main body of Trekkers were quartered.

When it was over, 140 Trekkers and citizens had been arrested. Charles Miller, a plainclothes policeman, died. Nick Schaack, a Trekker, later died in the hospital from injuries sustained in the riot. There were hundreds of injured residents, and Trekkers were taken to hospitals or private homes. Those taken to a hospital were also arrested. The police claimed 39 injuries in addition to the dead police officer, but denied that any protesters had been killed in the melee. The hospital records were subsequently altered to conceal the actual cause of death.

The next day, a barbed-wire stockade was erected around the area. News of the police-instigated riot was front-page news across Canada. About midnight, one of the Trek leaders telephoned Premier James Gardiner of Saskatchewan (equivalent to the Governor of an American State), who agreed to meet their delegation the next morning.

Gardiner sent a wire to Bennett, accusing the police of "precipitating a riot" while he had been negotiating a settlement with the Trekkers. He also told the Prime Minister the "men should be fed where they are and sent back to camp and homes as they request," and stated his government was prepared to "undertake this work of disbanding the men." An agreement to this effect was subsequently negotiated. Bennett was satisfied that he had smashed what he believed was a Communist revolt, and Gardiner was glad to rid his Province of the strikers.

The Federal Minister of Justice, Hugh Guthrie, probably on the orders of his boss, Bennett, lied to the House of Commons on July 2, saying, "Shots were fired by the strikers, and the fire was replied to with shots from the City Police." During the lengthy trials that followed, no evidence was ever produced to show that strikers fired so much as a single shos during the riot.

For his part, Bennett characterized the On-to-Ottawa Trek as "not a mere uprising against law and order but a definite revolutionary effort on the part of a group of men to usurp authority and destroy government."

The voters Canada weren't having it. As Mackenzie King, still the Leader of the Liberal Party, promised reforms to restore economic health, and as the Liberal campaigned under the slogan "King or Chaos," Bennett finally bowed to reality, and called an election for October 14. The Liberals went from 89 seats in the House to 173; the Conservatives, from 137 to 39. It remains the greatest repudiation any sitting Prime Minister of Canada has ever received. (Brian Mulroney had already resigned before he could receive an even greater smacking in 1993, and the defeat the Progressive Conserves suffered under Kim Campbell's leadership was a repudiation of the Party and of Mulroney, not of Campbell herself.)

Bennett remained Leader of the Opposition until 1938, as Mackenzie King's reforms worked. In 1939, Bennett resigned his seat for Calgary West, left the homeland that had rejected him, and moved to England, settling at a mansion in Surrey, outside London.

In 1941, he became the first and only former Canadian Prime Minister to be elevated to the peerage, as Viscount Bennett, Mickleham in the County of Surrey and of Calgary and Hopewell in the Dominion of Canada. He served in the House of Lords until he died on June 26, 1947, just short of his 77th birthday. He is buried in Mickleham, making him the only deceased former Canadian Prime Minister not buried in Canada.

Mackenzie King held power until his retirement in 1948, and then his handpicked successor, Louis St. Laurent, until 1957. Only then, 22 years and a World War later, did the Conservative Party -- by this point renamed the Progressive Conservative Party -- win another election, as John Diefenbaker became the next Prime Minister of their party.

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July 1, 1935 was a Monday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 8-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. The year before, Joe Cronin was the Senators' shortstop, best player, manager, and the son-in-law of team owner Clark Griffith. But with Griffith needing money, and Sox owner Tom Yawkey having lots of it, Cronin was now the Red Sox' shortstop, manager, and, for the moment, best player, before Yawkey began spending more money. He hit a home run in this game.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-1 at Navin Field in Detroit. (That ballpark was renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and Tiger Stadium in 1961.) Hank Greenberg went 0-for-4, but a 2-run triple by Marv Owen made the difference.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Billy Herman went 4-for-5, and Ken O'Dea went 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs.

* And the Chicago White Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 4-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

June 21, 1957: Dief the Chief

June 21, 1957: John Diefenbaker takes office as Prime Minister of Canada. He was the only conservative (with a "small C") Prime Minister between 1935 and 1979, and the only one to serve at least one full year between 1935 and 1984.

John George Diefenbaker was born on September 18, 1895 in Neustadt, 107 miles northwest of Toronto. It was one of several places in the Province of Ontario with a German name where German immigrants, like his grandparents, had moved. These included a city outside Hamilton named Berlin, for Germany's capital. When World War I came, and prejudice against Germans hit the Allied nations, including the U.S. and Canada, the city of Berlin changed its name to Kitchener, after a fallen British hero of that war.

In 1910, the family moved west to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where Diefenbaker remembered being 15 years old and taking his first political action, selling a newspaper to the visiting Prime Minister, Wilfred Laurier. He became disgusted at the treatment of French and Indigenous Canadians, later telling an interviewer:

From my earliest days, I knew the meaning of discrimination. Many Canadians were virtually second-hand citizens because of their names and racial origin. Indeed, it seemed until the end of World War II that the only first-class Canadians were either of English or French descent. As a youth, l determined to devote myself to assuring that all Canadians, whatever their racial origin, were equal and declared myself to be a sworn enemy of discrimination. 

By the time he was 21, he had both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Saskatchewan. He later became the 1st student ever to receive 3 degrees from that school, earning a law degree in 1919. In between, he served in the Canadian Army during World War I, being sent to Britain, but never into combat on the European Continent.

At the time, Saskatchewan was heavily tilted toward the Liberal Party, but he was a member of the Conservative Party. After success as a lawyer, he first ran for the House of Commons in 1925, but lost. The next year, due to a quirk in the national election laws and a dispute between Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and Governor-General Julian Byng, another election was held the next year, and Mackenzie King ran for the seat Diefenbaker had run for. An established political icon ran against a future one, and Mackenzie King won.

Diefenbaker ran for the Province's Legislative Assembly in 1929, Mayor of the city of Prince Albert in 1933, and the House of Commons again in 1938, having refused to run on 2 other occasions. Finally, in 1940, on his 6th try for public office and his 3rd try for Parliament, Diefenbaker won, despite his party having its worst election ever.

Canada's Conservative Party had become the Progressive Conservative Party in 1942, but hadn't had a Prime Minister since Richard Bennett lost to William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1935, and hadn't won a general election since Bennett beat Mackenzie King in 1930. Diefenbaker first ran for the PC Leadership in 1948, and won it in 1955. He stood as Party Leader in the general election of June 10, 1957, saying of his Party's program:

It is a program... for a united Canada, for one Canada, for Canada first, in every aspect of our political and public life, for the welfare of the average man and woman. That is my approach to public affairs, and has been throughout my life... A Canada, united from Coast to Coast, wherein there will be freedom for the individual, freedom of enterprise, and where there will be a Government which, in all its actions, will remain the servant and not the master of the people.

For the 1st time in 22 years, Canada had, and, for the 1st time in 27 years, elected, a conservative government: The Tories gained 61 seats, giving Diefenbaker a minority government, and forcing out the Liberal Party's Leader, Louis St. Laurent. "Dief the Chief" was the 1st Prime Minister from a riding (what America's House of Representatives would call a "District") from the Province of Saskatchewan -- indeed, the 1st from anywhere west of Ontario.

He called another election for March 31, 1958, and gained 96 seats to win the biggest majority any party has ever had in the country: 208 seats to the Liberals' 48. Canadian historian Conrad Black wrote, "He was very formidable; a deadly campaigner, an idiosyncratic but often galvanizing public speaker, a brilliant parliamentarian, and a man of many fine qualities. He was absolutely honest financially, a passionate supporter of the average and the underprivileged and disadvantaged person, a fierce opponent of any racial or religious or socioeconomic discrimination."

But Diefenbaker overplayed his hand. His aggressive conservatism made him more Canada's Barry Goldwater than its Dwight D. Eisenhower. He and "Ike" barely got along, and starting in 1961, he and John F. Kennedy couldn't stand each other. Nor could he and Harold Macmillan, whose tenure as Prime Minister of Britain coincided with his (January 10, 1957 to October 18, 1963), despite each of them leading his respective country's Conservative Party.

Canadian historian Robert Bothwell wrote, "By the time Diefenbaker left office, his conduct of foreign policy was reviled by an important and growing number of Canadians, while his relations with both the Americans and the British were disastrous."

Eventually, he alienated his own people, losing 89 seats and his majority in the 1962 election, 21 seats and the government entirely to Lester Pearson on April 22, 1963, and the Party leadership to Robert Stanfield in 1967.

Diefenbaker remained in Parliament until his death on August 16, 1979, from a heart attack at the age of 83, having lived to see Joe Clark become the 1st Prime Minister from the Progressive Conservative Party since himself. He is still revered by Canada's right wing, but only they seem to consider him to have been a positive force.

In 2003, the PCs merged with other, smaller right-of-center parties to become the new Conservative Party.

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June 21, 1957 was a Friday. Berkley Breathed, the cartoonist who created and wrote Bloom County, was born.

These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-2 at Yankee Stadium. Johnny Kucks was the winning pitcher. Mickey Mantle went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Yogi Berra went 1-for-4.

* The New York Giants beat the Chicago Cubs, 12-10 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Bobby Thomson and Danny O'Connell hit home runs for the Giants in the top of the 10th inning. Willie Mays went 2-for-6. Ernie Banks went 1-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at the 1st Busch Stadium (which was the last Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Von McDaniel pitched a 2-hit shutout. Stan Musial went 0-for-2 with a walk. Duke Snider went 1-for-4.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 4-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-5 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson did not play for the O's. Al Kaline did play for the Tigers, and went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 6-3 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Rooke Roger Maris went 1-for-3 with a walk for Cleveland.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Hank Foiles singled Bill Mazeroski home with the winning run in the top of the 11th. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-5. Frank Robinson went 5-for-5, but had no RBIs.

* And the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Milwaukee Braves, 6-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Curt Simmons outpitched Lew Burdette. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4.