Roaring Twenties in Canada

The Roaring Twenties in Canada describes a period in Canadian history from roughly 1920 to 1929 in which economic prosperity led to the flourishing of distinctive changes to social, cultural, and artistic mores. Like much of Europe and North America, Canada’s experience with the roaring twenties was a response to the devastation of World War I (1914 – 1918) and a desire to celebrate the return to greater public normalcy and economic prosperity. Unlike the United States, the 1920s era in Canada was less heavily influenced by such social factors as Prohibition, but rather by a growing sense of independence from its identity as a former colonial possession of Great Britain.

This shift in national identity did not come without growing pains. Like its neighbor to the south, Canada experienced the Jazz Age, growing consumerism, and equality for women. However, the 1920s in Canada was also a period of technological growth and political and economic turmoil. Soldiers returning from World War I led to a surplus of low-skill workers, while farmers in the Canadian Prairies and fishermen in the Maritime provinces suffered through extended periods of economic struggles at the start of the decade. By the early 1920s, unemployment was at 15 percent.

International demand for Canadian raw materials led to an economic recovery by mid-decade, eventually allowing the country to enjoy many of the cultural and artistic developments associated with the period. However, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in New York led to the start of the Great Depression in the United States, an economic fallout whose repercussions eventually spread to Canada, ending its own decade of relative prosperity.

Background

Although the cultural history of Canada dates back centuries, the concept of a unified territory called Canada with its own distinct identity may only be traced back to the nineteenth century. In 1841, the Colonies of Upper and Lower Canada where joined by Great Britain to form the Province of Canada. In 1867, this territory was merged with the British colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to establish the Dominion of Canada, a self-governing territory within the British Empire. Much of its early history was defined by its relations with the independent United States to the south and Britain, its colonial parent. Between 1870 and 1880, Canada expanded north and west, eventually increasing its own borders to stretch to the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Sea. It also saw Britain settle the claim over ownership of Alaska and the San Juan Islands in the United States’ favor, which led to growing dissatisfaction with British oversight of Canadian foreign affairs.

When Britain joined World War I on August 4, 1914, Canada was automatically at war as well, because the Dominion did not have authority over its own foreign policy. As a result, Canada joined the war effort two and a half years before the United States. The Canadian economy and military were not fully prepared for the scale of a world war, and Canada suffered from a lack of laborers and the cost of a major military campaign. When the war finally ended in 1918, Canada faced an influx of returning laborers with not enough jobs to support them. The result was a damaging recession that Canada found itself unable to shake until nearly halfway through the decade. The impact of World War I was much more severe on Canada than its neighbor to the south, which remained neutral until April of 1917 and reaped the economic rewards of supplying the Allies with provisions throughout much of the war.

Canada took longer to rebound from the war than the United States. Despite being a founding member of the newly established League of Nations, it retreated from international politics to focus on economic recovery. While World War I had a damaging effect on the Canadian economy, it marked Canada’s debut on the international stage and helped foster nationalist pride. As a result, during the early 1920s, while still smarting from British foreign policy decisions on its behalf and recognizing the value of a stronger trade relationship with its wealthy neighbor, Canada increasingly distanced itself from Britain and instead strengthened its political and economic relationships with the United States. Canada’s new relationship with the United States made increasing sense as it found itself one of the first witnesses to the power of technology to shrink boundaries as radio broadcasts and cultural trends from the United States began to seep across the two countries’ massive shared border. For the first time, Canada found itself more culturally shaped by the United States than by Britain.

As a result of these changing relationships, Canada began to question Britain’s ability to control Canada’s foreign affairs and took increasing steps toward true independence. In 1923, it signed the Halibut Treaty (an agreement regarding US – Canadian fishing rights) with the United States, which marked the first time that it had signed a foreign treaty without the input of London. Together with South Africa, Canada pushed Britain to grant greater independence to its Dominions, which resulted in the Balfour Declaration of 1926. The Statute of Westminster in 1931 would fully grant Canada authority over its own legislative affairs, marking its transition from a Dominion of Britain to a member of the much looser British Commonwealth of Nations.

Overview

While other countries reflected on the Roaring Twenties as a spirited recovery from World War I and enjoyed the benefits of newly restored economies and peace, for Canada, the decade held great change. It was about establishing a newly independent cultural identity that, while still reflecting its proximity to the United States and its long-held political relationship to the United Kingdom, allowed Canadians to define themselves for the first time as distinctly Canadian.

The Canadian economy was greatly assisted by the massive growth in American industry. Over the course of the 1920s, the United States replaced the United Kingdom as Canada’s number one trading partner. This economic relationship remained in effect well into the twenty-first century. American industry was hungry for Canadian raw materials and invested heavily in manufacturing plants in its northern neighbor. While this proved to be good for Canada in the short term, it proved shortsighted as it meant that most of Canada’s oil refineries and production facilities were American-owned. This situation would later limit Canadian profits and stoke resentment toward its neighbor. However, during the Roaring Twenties, Canada’s focus was on development and recovery, and the influx of American money helped raise the Canadian standard of living.

The new prosperity allowed Canadians to embrace technological progress and consumerism. By 1930, 69 percent of all Canadians had access to electric lights, 61 percent enjoyed the benefits of running water, and 40 percent owned a telephone. Indoor flush toilets and refrigerators were other personal luxuries that more than half of all Canadians enjoyed by 1930. The AM radio was invented by Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian, and he initiated the first radio broadcast in 1920 from Montreal. By the end of the decade, more than 300,000 of these devices helped to bring Canadians together despite the immense geographical size of their country. In addition, such novelties as movies, automobiles, and airplanes became increasing commonplace over the course of the decade as all became more affordable to the average Canadian.

Just as women in the United States won the right to vote in 1919 after a lengthy social campaign and legislative process, women in Canada struggled for rights equal to that of men. In 1916, women were first granted the right to vote in the province of Manitoba. However, women were not allowed to serve in the Canadian Senate as Canadian law dictated that only eligible persons could run for office, and women were not legally defined as persons. Thanks to the efforts of Canadian suffragettes like Louise McKinney and Henrietta Edwards, the rule was overturned enabling Cairine Wilson to become Canada’s first woman senator in 1930.

Like the United States, Canada experimented with Prohibition and established a national ban on alcohol from 1918 to 1920. Canada’s alcohol ban was largely an outgrowth akin to other temporary short-term wartime shortages and its national ban ended after only two years, although some provinces would maintain regional bans until as late as 1948. As a result, Canadian alcohol became a popular export to the United States during its own era of Prohibition, which lasted from 1920 to 1933. The smuggling of alcohol resulted in a rise in organized crime in Canada, eventually leading to the start of the Byng-King Crisis in 1926. That year, several members of Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s Liberal Party were discovered to have taken bribes in return for permitting alcohol to be smuggled to the United States. Realizing his already weak government could be toppled, King approached Lord Byng, the British governor general of Canada. As governor general, Byng had the ability to call for new elections despite not being Canadian. This eventually led to a constitutional crisis that King used to his own benefit. As a result, the governor general was stripped of most of his powers and these events helped lead to Canada’s request to end its relationship as a Dominion of the United Kingdom.

While Canada emerged from the 1920s transformed as a social, economic, and political entity, the end of the decade also coincided with the start of the Great Depression (1929 – 1939). Still largely reliant upon the health of American industry to support its own economy, the depression had an outsized effect on Canada, with industrial production falling to almost half of its 1929 levels by 1932. This new economic reality would have a dramatic impact on Canada and further usher its ongoing twentieth-century transformation.

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