Working Canadians: Books from the CCLH
1 total work
Setting municipal relief administrations of the 1930s within a widerliterature on welfare and urban poor relief, Strikwerda highlights thelegacy on which relief policymakers relied in determining policydirections, as well as the experiences of the individuals and familieswho depended on relief for their survival. Focusing on three prairiecities-Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg-Strikwerda arguesthat municipal officials used their power to set policy to address whatthey perceived to be the most serious threats to the social orderstemming from the economic crisis. By analyzing the differing ways inwhich local relief programs treated married and single men, he alsoexplores important gendered dynamics at work in the response of cityadministrators to the social and economic upheaval of the Depression.Probing the mindset of local elites struggling in extraordinarycircumstances, The Wages of Relief describes the enduringimpact of the policy changes made in the 1930s in the direction of abroad, national approach to unemployment-an approach that usheredin Canada's modern welfare system.