Full bibliography

The worldwide depression prostrated the British Columbia economy in the early 1930s. Production levels dropped and industry stagnated. Unemployment became a pressing problem, and as jobless from throughout Canada rode the trains to the warmer climes of British Columbia's Lower Mainland there was fear that British Columbia was becoming "just a blamed resort for all the hoboes in Canada." Vancouver was inundated with unemployed workers and became the focus of agitation as the job-less organized demonstrations, tag days, and parades in order to gain the ear of governments and improve their circumstances. ... In interior centres, where the climate was much less kind, the jobless also launched an attack on the established order. In the Prince George district unemployed workers, led by communists, pressed the local government for higher relief payments, organized demonstrations and parades, initiated strikes in relief camps and at work projects, and even entered the political arena in the 1933 provincial election under the banner of the United Front. --Introduction