The Great Depression (48 page)

None of this was correct; but it was believed, and it killed any chance for Evans’s demonstration convoy on the twenty-seventh. On that afternoon, when the motorcade was supposed to move the strikers east, only one truck and two automobiles turned up. The sad little contingent set off bravely toward the Manitoba border, led by Reverend Samuel B. East, a tall, lithe, and energetic United Church minister, like Woodsworth a follower of the Social Gospel. East was popular with his congregation but was looked on with some distaste by the church hierarchy because of his pronounced left-wing views. Communism, the sixty-two-year-old minister had once declared, was “one divine, far-off event, towards which all creation moves.”

East was a leading member of the Citizens’ Emergency Committee. The night before he had been a principal speaker at the trekkers’ rally. “Bennett,” he had cried in his best pulpit voice, “wants to be [the] Mussolini of Canada. Shall we let him?” Now, with the crowd’s enthusiastic “No!” echoing in his ears, he was off to do his bit for the cause. “We’re heading east with East” was his slogan. In less than an hour, he found himself in jail.

The tiny convoy, followed at a discreet distance by some five hundred cars crammed with onlookers, encountered a cordon of steel-helmeted police barring its way on the outskirts of town. In vain, East produced a permit from the highways department, giving him the right to use trucks on the roads. Another hundred police arrived, scooped up everybody in the convoy, and rushed them to RCMP headquarters. East was never charged and was released later that night. The others were held under the all-purpose Section 98 of the Criminal Code that was the only legislation the police could properly use.

Events were now moving towards a climax. In Winnipeg, fifteen hundred relief camp workers announced their own trek to Ottawa. In Regina, the men refused to go to the government’s camp at Lumsden, believing it was a concentration camp where anything could happen to them. Their funds were low; there was only enough money left to feed the men one meal. Donations had dried up because the citizens had been misled into believing they would be arrested if they helped the trekkers. Evans himself was searching for a face-saving solution that would allow the men to return to their camps or their homes with some semblance of honour.

R.B. Bennett, however, was in a state of panic. Manion had warned him that “this Communistic crowd … are determined to stir up what would be practically a revolution.” Strong measures, he insisted, would be needed to curb it. “Somehow the leaders should be got at and if possible got out of the position of leading these unemployed.”

Bennett took that advice. On June 28, Colonel Wood received his orders. The government wanted the strike leaders arrested – urgently. Once again that handiest of all sections of the Criminal Code, No. 98, was to be invoked. Under it, all trekkers could be considered Communists and thus subject to arrest.

Wood was in an unenviable position. As head of the provincial police force in Saskatchewan, he was used to taking his instructions from the provincial attorney general and also having the benefit of his advice. Now, at this moment of crisis, he no longer had the opportunity to consult with the civil authority. Ottawa had taken that away and was calling the shots by remote control – the long-distance telephone from the capital, hundreds of miles removed from the scene of the trouble.

Wood did not have enough local evidence to charge anybody, and said so. As far as he was concerned, the trek leaders had done nothing while in Saskatchewan to warrant arrest. Ottawa replied that John Leopold, the man who had fingered Tim Buck and his comrades, would be arriving post-haste on July 1. (In fact, not one of the trekkers was ever found guilty under Section 98.)

Meanwhile, Evans was still trying to achieve peace with honour. On July 1, he approached C.P. Burgess, the local representative of the federal Department of Labour, to suggest that the trekkers be allowed to disband and return voluntarily to their camps or their homes. He also asked for amnesty for everybody
but himself. The federal government, having fought the trekkers to a standstill, now had a chance to cool the situation and, in victory, to be magnanimous. But Evans’s plan was rejected. Ottawa insisted that everybody go to the Lumsden camp to be processed before going back to Regina to board the trains.

It was Monday, July 1, the Dominion Day holiday, the end of a long weekend. Communication with Ottawa had been maddeningly slow. Now the trekkers tried to reach Premier Gardiner. He was finally located at his farm outside Regina and persuaded to come back into town for a meeting. Again Evans was trying to get permission for his organization to handle the dispersal. Failing that he would have preferred to have the Saskatchewan government oversee the task rather than federal authorities. He also attempted one more meeting with Burgess and Wood. That was unproductive. Burgess refused to meet with Gardiner. Wood claimed that Evans was trying to get his men back to Vancouver to join the longshoremen’s strike.

The holiday conspired to frustrate the most obvious of solutions. Gardiner did not reach his office until four that afternoon and, with most of his colleagues still out of town, scheduled a Cabinet meeting for eight. Those members of the Cabinet who could be reached were still gathering for the meeting – Attorney General Davis had not yet arrived – when the news came just after eight o’clock that a riot had broken out in Market Square.

Barring the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, the Regina Riot of July 1, 1935, is probably the best-known civilian disturbance in Canadian history. But unlike the Winnipeg strike, which had a purpose and a meaning, the events in Regina’s Market Square that evening had neither objective nor reason.

The riot shouldn’t have happened, didn’t have to happen, and almost didn’t happen. It was fuelled by fear, suspicion, stubbornness, pride, and, at the end, implacable fury.

The federal government under R.B. Bennett must bear the greatest share of blame. Bennett’s pathological fear of bloody revolution provoked, in the end, bloody violence. Ottawa’s stubborn insistence on running affairs in Retina at long distance and
its equally stubborn refusal to make any concessions to Evans contributed. The trekkers’ innate suspicions of the Lumsden camp and Evans’s insistence on saving face by pretending that a victory of sorts had been achieved didn’t help. And finally, there was the effect of the holiday weekend, which slowed down negotiations until they were outdistanced by the rush of events. Had Jimmy Gardiner been in his office that Monday, had the members of his Cabinet been at their desks, a solution would almost certainly have been found and the trek peacefully disbanded, for Gardiner did not share Bennett’s unyielding antagonism to Evans and his followers.

One can only sympathize with Colonel Wood, the veteran Mountie, who was under continual pressure from Ottawa to arrest the leadership of the trek immediately. Although Evans and his colleagues could have been apprehended at any time or place in Regina, Wood wanted to move when he could take them all at once and without inciting an uproar among the trekkers. But Ottawa insisted they be arrested without delay.

Wood was surprised to find that the two government lawyers charged with preparing indictments against seven trek leaders had warrants ready for serving by the time he got back to his headquarters at five o’clock after his meeting with Evans and the trek leaders. He still doubted that there was enough evidence to justify issuing warrants, and as it turned out he was right. Nonetheless, he did not dare wait. In short, the RCMP, a supposedly independent police force, was bowing to political pressure. Equally incredible was Wood’s failure to disclose his intentions to the Saskatchewan government. Later, he claimed he did not know that Evans was meeting with the Premier to suggest a way out of the impasse. As it was, neither Gardiner nor his attorney general had any intimation of what was about to happen.

The question was, where and when should the men be arrested? Certainly not at the Exhibition Grounds, surrounded by their followers. But a mass rally was planned that evening at Market Square, where several speakers were to make a final plea for funds. According to the plan, the police would go to the Unity Centre, the trek headquarters on the edge of the square, and try to make the arrests there. If their quarry wasn’t present – and at seven o’clock that night the police found no one – the move would be made at the rally.

This was a dangerous decision. Regina’s chief constable, Martin Bruton, who sat in on the strategy session with the Mounties, clearly had his doubts. Was it really advisable to try to take men into custody at a packed outdoor meeting? he asked. Bruton registered his disapproval, but after pointing out the seriousness of the move went no further. Wood apparently thought he had no choice.

The assistant commissioner would testify to the commission that later investigated the riot that he did not expect trouble. But he acted as if he did. The arrests would be made by a flying squad of RCMP and city plainclothesmen. Three big moving vans loaded with one hundred steel-helmeted Mounties would be stationed on three sides of the square. Twenty-nine uniformed city police armed with lead-tipped batons and sawed-off baseball bats would be hidden in the police garage on the south side. A troop of mounted RCMP officers would also be positioned to the south at Twelfth and Osler.

If Wood didn’t expect trouble, why this overkill? Several interesting points emerged later. The police, it turned out, had no idea of how many of the wanted men would be present at the rally. Actually, only two – Evans and Black – were on hand. The crowd was largely civilian; most of the trekkers were elsewhere, watching a baseball game. Of the fifteen hundred people in the square, well over a thousand were curious spectators, enjoying the end of a holiday weekend – citizens such as John Cheers, who was on his way to see a movie but stopped off “because the wife had never seen these strikers in a body before and she said she would like to see the boys.”

The policemen at the scene were badly confused about the tactics to be followed. Wood wanted all the police to be held back and not used unless the arresting officers (in plainclothes) ran into trouble. But Chief Bruton and also Inspector Duncan McDougall of the city police believed they were to rush the meeting as soon as a signal whistle was blown, whether the plainclothes detail needed them or not. That is what happened and that is what caused the violence that followed.

Until the whistle blew, the scene in the square was peaceful, with many of the spectators seated in rows of chairs around the speakers’ platform. Gerry Winters, representing the trekkers, and John Toothill, on behalf of the Citizens’ Emergency Committee,
appealed for funds over a hastily contrived loud-speaker system. Evans, seated on the platform, was handed a note reporting that the square was surrounded by Mounties. Evans gave the note to George Black, the chairman, who asked if he should tell the spectators. Evans said no: “This is a peaceful meeting and if you announce it you’re liable to cause a certain amount of unrest.” Looking over the heads of the crowd, he could see the moving vans stationed on the perimeter of the square but couldn’t be sure who was in them.

Steve Brodie, standing at the south end of the square facing the platform, also saw the vans. The night was so sultry that the rear doors were slightly open for ventilation, and Brodie could see the familiar yellow stripes on the blue breeches of those within. “Look what is here!” he said to Johnny Dean, a member of his division. “I can smell trouble.”

At that moment the doors were opened another foot and the two men could see that the police were wearing steel helmets. “If there’s no trouble,” said Johnny Dean, “then they’re going to bring it.”

Even as he spoke, there came the shrill sound of a police whistle. Immediately a wave of city police, dressed in blue, burst from the rear of the police garage and tore into the crowd, swinging their batons above their heads. Evans tried to leave the platform but was knocked off his feet. The plainclothes squad seized him and Black, frog-marched them to a truck on Halifax Street, and took them at once to the city police station. Wood’s elaborate preparations to arrest seven trek leaders had resulted in the capture of only two.

The moment the whistle blew, the steel-helmeted Mounted Police, who were supposed to be held in reserve, poured from the big vans and waded into the crowd.

In less than a minute, the scene in Market Square was transformed into a confused mêlée marked by scenes of unmitigated savagery. The people in the square, who had no idea what was happening and saw the police coming toward them, batons raised, began to flee in panic. The first impression Willis Shaparla had was of a terrible roar; his instant reaction was that the square had been hit by an earthquake. He could not associate the sound with human beings. Nor could he identify the source, for he was being pushed and shoved by those around him trying to
escape. Then he caught a glimpse of blue uniforms and realized what was going on. As he said later, “that was the most fearful moment of my life.”