”Families, tribes, dusted off, transported by tractor. Full cars, caravans, homeless and hungry people; twenty thousand fifty thousand one hundred thousand two hundred thousand. They streamed through the mountains, hungry and restless – restless like ants, rushing to find work – to lift, push, pull, pick, cut – anything, any burden to carry, to feed themselves . The children are hungry. We have no place to live. Like ants rushing to find work, food and above all land. “John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath, 1939Between 1900 and 1929, Canada experienced the fastest economic growth in the world, with only a sharp but brief recession during the First World War. The 1920s were a period of successful growth. The standard of living improved remarkably. Before the First World War, the American stock market was small and represented a relatively small part of the Canadian economy. This changed suddenly with the onset of the Great Depression in the late 1920s, when the economy took a serious and devastating turn; affecting the lives of Canadians for nearly a decade. Many Canadians believed that the depression was caused by the collapse of the wheat harvest and not the stock market crash, as many Canadians and farmers depended on the growth of wheat as it made up the majority of their exports. , but as wheat-producing provinces were hit by a severe drought, wheat harvests collapsed, leaving many farmers jobless and penniless, with serious consequences for Canada. The causes of the Great Depression were due to overproduction and overexpansion, as Canadian businesses expanded their goods industries so they could generate more profits. Yet economic activity declined in the late 1920s and businesses found themselves with heavier debt and a lack of...... middle of paper...... which meant spending large sums of money to produce ships, planes, weapons. , and other essential war materials. This led to industrial growth and unemployment then began to decline rapidly as new jobs surfaced. yesnet.yk.ca/schools/projects/canadianhistory/depression/depression.htmlhttp://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=a1ARTA0003425http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/91513/ Canada/43009/The-Great-Depressionhttp://www.42explore2.com/depresn.htmhttp://www.ascension.k12.nf.ca/curriculum/social/canhistory_1201/new_page_8.htm http://edss.wrdsb .on.ca/courses/chc2di/THE%20GREAT%20DEPRESSION.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_Canadahttp://www.us-history.com/pages/h1583.html