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Early in the 20th century, the American industrialist Henry Ford massively applied the assembly line principle to produce the first affordable car, the Ford Model T. This marked the beginning of the automobile era and Model T was produced between 1913 and 1927. -
The Spanish flu of 1918 infected around 33% of the world's population, there were no effective treatments and no efforts to prevent the spread. The Spanish flu was the name given t a form of influenza and caused by H1N1 virus that started in some type of bird. From 1918 to 1919, the Spanish flu infected 500 million people and killed about 50 million people. It was harmful to infants under the age of 5 and people over the age of 65, but it also killed numerous healthy adults, aged 20-40. -
The Canadian Radio began with the first licenses for private commercial radio stations in 1922. However by late 1920s, many Canadian radio listeners were turning their dials to American stations. This, along with the rudimentary development of Canadian radio, led the federal government, in 1928, to establish a royal commission to advise the future of broadcasting in Canada. -
At 11:00 am on May 15, 1919, all workers walked off the job and marched into the streets of Winnipeg, causing one of the biggest labour actions Canada has ever seen. Strikers included both the private and public sectors, and ranged from garment workers to police officers. -
At City Hall, the crowd began to vandalize a streetcar, The Royal North-West Mounted Police charged after the protesters, beating them with clubs and firing bullets. The violence injured about 30 people and killed two. Known as Bloody Saturday. The day ended with federal troops occupying the city's streets. It's called that because the climax of the strike came a few days later on the Saturday. -
The Jazz Age, also known as the Roaring Twenties, was an era of American and Canadian history that began after World War I and ended with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. However, the era's social and cultural legacy lives on and still influences American and Canadian life today. Many aspects of American and Canadian life that had beginnings in the 1920s are immediately recognizable as part of modern-day society. -
The group of seven refers to a movement formed by seven Canadian visual artists who are best known for their paintings of the Canadian outdoor landscape. The Group of Seven was created in 1920 and was dissolved in 1933. The group created inspiring art collections which can be predominately found in three Canadian art galleries. The men in this group was Frederick Varley, J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frank Johnston, Ay Jacksin, Lawrence Harris, and Franklin Charmichael. -
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The prohibition era started in 1920, the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it banned transportation, manufacture, and sale of liquors. It went into effect with passage of the Volstead Act. Prohibition was defiantly difficult to enforce, The illegal production and distribution of liquor became rampant. The national government did not have the means or desire to try to enforce every border, river, speakeasy and lake. -
The discovery of insulin occurred in 1921 following the ideas of a Canadian orthopedic surgeon named Frederick G. Banting, the chemistry skills of his assistant Charles Best, and John MacLeod of the University of Toronto in Canada. These two scientists observed the development of severe diabetes in the space of 3 weeks, including symptoms that will be familiar to people with the condition today, including, high blood sugar, highly diluted urine, diabetic coma, and death from ketosis. -
The Exclusion Act was a last ditch effort to block all immigration from China after four decades of charging ever increasing head taxes failed to stop the flow of Chinese migration. The 1923 Act also resulted in Canadian-born Chinese children being issued an “immigration card” containing the words “this certificate does not establish legal status in Canada.” -
On October 29, 1929, the Canadian stock market crashed in an event known as Black Tuesday. This began a chain of events that led to the Great Depression, a 10-year economic slump that affected all industrialized countries in the world. As real estate values declined during the late 1920s, the stock market also weakened. When stock prices started to slide on October 29, people rushed to sell their stock and get out of the market, which drove prices down even further. -
The Great Depression was ushered in by the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. It ended as dramatically a decade later on September 3, 1939, when the Second World War began. The widespread poverty and suffering during the 1930s the result of unemployment, drought and lack of a social safety net transformed social welfare in Canada. Until the 1930s, mainly private charities dealt with unemployment and poverty. However, charity work was usually organized to meet temporary. -
Mackenzie King’s “Five Cent Speech” was about King’s belief that the Canadian government should not give unemployment benefits to provincial governments in Canada with Conservative leadership. The speech made King seem out of touch with the hardships of ordinary people and helped the Conservative opposition gain support. Mackenzie King was the Prime Minister of Canada during the beginning of the Great Depression. By 1930, hundreds of thousands of Canadians were out of work. -
At the height of the Great Depression, thousands of jobless men were shunted off to federal relief camps in the Canadian wilderness. The camps became a focal point for a generations anger and a lasting legacy of a government's ineffectiveness during the era. By 1932, there were an estimated 70,000 unemployed transients. Many of the men congregated in cities and frustration was growing among their ranks. -
In April 1935, about 1,500 residents of federal Unemployment Relief Camps in British Columbia went on strike. They travelled by train and truck to Vancouver to protest poor conditions in the Depression era camps. After their months long protest proved futile, they decided to take their fight to Ottawa. On 3 June, more than 1,000 strikers began travelling across the country, riding atop railcars.