A Review of Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression by Lara Campbell

Reviewed by: Ava Stocco

Lara Campbell’s Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression puts family as its central focus to examine the impacts of the Great Depression in Ontario. Campbell addresses the effects the Depression had on individual family members, dedicating specific chapters to the roles of mother, father and child, and, considering the relationships between each role and the overall family dynamic. Respectable Citizens provides a novel perspective in which it steps away from the traditional knowledge of strikes and marchesi and surveys daily life from perspectives typically excluded from history, especially in the era of transition to a liberal welfare stateii. 

Campbell uses a variety of narratives, primary and secondary sources throughout her chapters to express her argument, constituting her book as tertiary literature. In the first chapter, which focuses on motherhood, "Giving All the Good in Me to Save My Children”iii, Campbell addresses mothers as more than domestic caregivers: they are financial budgetersiv, wage earnersv, and food rationersvi too. To address the role of sewing, of significant importance, Campbell considers a North Bay newspaper article detailing sewing purchases and Ellen Stafford’s memoir of sewing, in which she describes it to be the main contributor to endless choresvii. Similarly, chapter three, “The Obligations of Family”viii, reviews the child’s experience of contributing to the family’s income, as seen in Charles Smith and Martin Boudreau who prioritise employment over educationix. Campbell’s use of official records, court cases, newspapers and oral histories aids immensely in conveying her arguments and transforms her book into a valuable source for studentsx. 

Traditionally, the history of the Great Depression is discussed through political and economic lenses; social impacts are solely viewed through white unemployed men “riding the rods'' and entering relief campsxi. Campbell highlights that Canadian historiography on the Great Depression is surprisingly fragmented and incompletexii, and that Canadian welfare state history has mainly been written from an institutional perspective, removing the narrative of the welfare recipientsxiii. Campbell, in contrast, not only provides a female and child perspective, but also challenges the view of unemployed men by supplementing undiscussed societal undertones: the male experience during the Great Depression tightly associated labour to manhood and respectabilityxiv, thus suicide out of unemployment shame was frequentxv. 

Campbell’s narratives of Indigenous populations and people of colour, however, are limited. Indigenous people are looked at solely through the “Indian Relief Policies”xvi, while Black women are mentioned only once regarding discrimination in domestic jobsxvii. Although Campbell does address how life was difficult for these populations, she does not expand on this to explain their experience in full. 

  Campbell’s book outlines well the social characteristics and family structures within white Christian working-class populations during the Great Depression in Ontario and briefly discusses the Jewish experience through the Jewish Communist movementxviii. Campbell also provides a glimpse into the political actions and laws put into place at this time, like mother allowancesxix, and Prime Minister Bennett’s attempt to improve public fundingxx. The legal system is explored through examples of family court hearings on issues over lack of foodxxi and child custody, especially those where families could not afford to care for their childrenxxii. The book provides an explanation for why proposed relief systems did not function well nor cure the symptoms of economic depression: shame acted as a large barrier that prevented men from accessing helpxxiii. The narratives of Indigenous people and people of colour, however, are notably missing from all legal, political and social aspects. 

  Although Campbell’s social and political description of Ontario in the Great Depression can be applied to other Canadian provinces, she equally provides perspectives unique to the Ontario experience. Those urban issues addressed, like alcoholismxxiv and police protest brutalityxxv, could be found in other urban centres like Winnipeg and Vancouver. Meanwhile, rural issues like falling crop pricesxxvi and forced foreclosures could be seen in the prairie provinces, like Alberta and Saskatchewan. However, she does provide a more Ontario-centric approach through the exploration of the actions taken by Ontario Premiers George Henry and Mitchell Hepburn. Campbell discusses multiple cases of citizens writing to the Premiers asking for money and demanding unemployment insurancexxvii and addresses specific policies such as Henry’s recommendation to standardise relief allowances in Ontarioxxviii. 

In Campbell’s bibliography, one can clearly see a dominance of settler authors. Even the sources used for the limited Indigenous discussion are written by non-Indigenous authors: Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture (1994), by American Antoinette Burton, and A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918–1939 (2003), by Settler Canadian Jarvis Brownlie, prevent the representation of an authentic Indigenous perspective given neither author have Indigenous backgrounds. Campbell’s source selection reinforces the terrible stereotype that the only legitimate and reliable historical information comes from Settler, non-Indigenous sources.

Overall, Respectable Citizens provides an outlook on traditionally excluded perspectives of the Great Depression and explores an alternate view to the stereotypical white, unemployed male experience. Although Campbell uses a variety of diverse primary sources to support her argument, she fails to present narratives from Indigenous people and people of colour, and those few sources she does use were written by non-Indigenous authors. Hence, Campbell’s book could be used well to understand the experience of women and children during the Great Depression, but is not a viable resource for interrogating the experiences of non-white, non-Christian citizens of Ontario in the Great Depression.  

This piece was written by our Ava Stocco, and edited by Toby Triggs

Expand for Citations and Further Reading

Campbell, Lara. Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.