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While it began in the USA, the Great Depression spread worldwide, causing many to loose their incomes, homes, and even lives due to disease and starvation.
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Workers faced huge problems when the Great Depression hit. Because business owners were loosing money, they couldn't afford to keep all of their employees, resulting in mass layoffs. Those who were laid off had trouble finding new jobs, and many became bums riding the rails looking for work, or even just some food and a roof over their heads.
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The limited amount of jobs available was a struggle for all working Canadians, but women who wanted jobs struggled more. Due to societal prejudice, women had rarely done any form of non-domestic work until the first world war. Unmarried women or women with many children could no longer rely on the support of their parents or husbands when the Depression hit, so many tried to find work. But because of their gender they found it far harder to get jobs.
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The Dust Bowl was a series of droughts and dust storms that made farming nigh impossible in the praries.
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As war broke out, soldiers were needed to fight, and many men enlisted in the military. They would be paid, fed, and clothed, and for many destitute men that was enough to persuade them to go join up.
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Just as the Dust Bowl and the Depression were coming to an end, World War 2 began. Armies need food, and there were a lot of allied armies to feed. As the farms recovered, the farmers found themselves selling off crops easily and making good money feeding the troops overseas.
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Due to all the able bodied men of age joining the military many jobs were left for women to do. Factory work was one of these, encouraged by propaganda featuring Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl. Women enjoyed their new freedom as well as their responsibility to work, but many were laid off when the war ended.
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Without farming, there was a severe food shortage that raised food prices, but most people couldn't afford that! There were also locusts that descended upon what little crops were left and with them brought more disease. Because of this many farmers and their families suffered, as their animals died from lack of food and their families starved.
