Regina, Saskatchewan police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ambush strikers participating in the On-to-Ottawa Trek.
The On-to-Ottawa Trek was a mass protest movement in Canada in 1935 sparked by unrest among unemployed single men in federal relief camps principally in Western Canada. Federal relief camps were brought in under Prime Minister R. B. Bennetts government as a result of the Great Depression. The Great Depression crippled the Canadian economy and left one in nine citizens on relief. The relief, however, did not come free; the Bennett government ordered the Department of National Defence to organize work camps where single unemployed men were used to construct roads and other public works at a rate of twenty cents per day. The men in the relief camps were living in poor conditions with very low wages. The men decided to unite and in 1933, and led by Arthur "Slim" Evans the men created Workers' Unity League (WUL). The Workers' Unity League helped the men organize the Relief Camp Workers' Union.
A strike was held in December 1934 with the men leaving the various camps and protesting in Vancouver, British Columbia. After a two-month protest, they returned to the camps after a promise of a government commission to look into their complaints. When a commission was not appointed a second strike was approved by the members and a walkout was called on April 4, 1935.
About 1,000 strikers headed for Ottawa. The strikers' demands were:
(1) that work with wages be instituted at a minimum of 50cents per hour for unskilled workers and trade union rates for skilled labour on the basis of a six-hour day, a five-day week with a minimum of twenty work days per month;
(2) that all workers in the camps be covered by the Workmen's Compensation Act and that adequate first aid supplies be carried on the jobs at all times;
(3) that the National Defence and all military control with the system of blacklisting be abolished;
(4) that democratically elected committees be recognized in every camp;
(5) that there be instituted a system of noncontributory unemployment insurance;
(6) that all workers be given their democratic right to vote;
(7) that Section 98 of the Criminal Code, Sections 41 and 42 of the Immigration Act and all vagrancy laws and anti-working class laws be repealed.Public support for the men was enormous, but the municipal, provincial and federal governments passed responsibility between themselves. They then decided to take their grievances to the federal government. On June 3, 1935, hundreds of men began boarding boxcars headed east in what became known as the "On-to-Ottawa Trek".
Regina () is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, after Saskatoon, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2016 census, Regina had a city population of 215,106, and a Metropolitan Area population of 236,481. Statistics Canada has estimated the CMA's population to be 263,184 as of 2020. It is governed by Regina City Council. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Sherwood No. 159.
Regina was previously the seat of government of the North-West Territories, of which the current provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta originally formed part, and of the District of Assiniboia. The site was previously called Wascana ("Buffalo Bones" in Cree), but was renamed to Regina (Latin for "Queen") in 1882 in honour of Queen Victoria. This decision was made by Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Louise, who was the wife of the Governor General of Canada, the Marquess of Lorne.Unlike other planned cities in the Canadian West, on its treeless flat plain Regina has few topographical features other than the small spring run-off, Wascana Creek. Early planners took advantage of such opportunity by damming the creek to create a decorative lake to the south of the central business district with a dam a block and a half west of the later elaborate 260 m (850 ft) long Albert Street Bridge across the new lake. Regina's importance was further secured when the new province of Saskatchewan designated the city its capital in 1906. Wascana Centre, created around the focal point of Wascana Lake, remains one of Regina's attractions and contains the Provincial Legislative Building, both campuses of the University of Regina, First Nations University of Canada, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, the Regina Conservatory (in the original Regina College buildings), the Saskatchewan Science Centre, the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts.
Residential neighbourhoods include precincts beyond the historic city centre are historically or socially noteworthy neighbourhoods – namely Lakeview and The Crescents, both of which lie directly south of downtown. Immediately to the north of the central business district is the old warehouse district, increasingly the focus of shopping, nightclubs and residential development; as in other western cities of North America, the periphery contains shopping malls and big box stores.
In 1912, the Regina Cyclone destroyed much of the town; in the 1930s, the Regina Riot brought further attention and, in the midst of the 1930s drought and Great Depression, which hit the Canadian Prairies particularly hard with their economic focus on dry land grain farming. The CCF (now the NDP, a major left-wing political party in Canada), formulated its foundation Regina Manifesto of 1933 in Regina. In recent years, Saskatchewan's agricultural and mineral resources have come into new demand, and it has entered a new period of strong economic growth.