Canada–U.S. relations during the “dirty ’thirties”
Billie Jo’s brief interaction with the reporter from Toronto presents a small piece of a broader phenomenon: the relations between the United States and Canada during the years both countries were subjected to the economic ills of the Great Depression, or “dirty ’thirties.”
Proletarian Interactions
The average citizens of both countries, then, as today, had a range of opinions about their Yankee or Canuck neighbours (or neighbors). Consider this 1933 political cartoon by Canadian artist Otto Playter:
For Playter (and probably a goodly portion of his readers) the perception was that Canadian public opinion honoured Europeans and Americans in a comically grovelling manner.
But the inherent ambivalence of Canadians’ opinions about their southern neighbours is even more distinctly illustrated in the letters to the editor that appeared in the Canadian Magazine five months prior to Playter’s cartoon.
The first thing to note is the editor’s seemingly offhand comment that G. G’s praise “makes even the depression not so depressive.” It is clear that at this time, Canada is in the throes of the Great Depression — one year prior to the diary entries constructed by Karen Hesse for Billie Jo. This is followed by F. S’s criticism of the magazine, including the complaint:
“why do so many people always harp on Americans? They are good people and do us no harm. They have better… everything. Almost all of us have relatives in the United Sattes [sic.], so let us be neighborly.”
The general scantiness of American publications’ comments about Canadians during this time period suggests that the Canucks may have been largely ignored — perhaps a nod to Playter, who might just have been right in his comical perception.
But we do also have access to a historical fiction account: Hesse’s detailing of Billie Jo’s perception of the Toronto Star photographer, James Kingsbury, is telling:
“A fellow from Canada,
James Kingsbury,
photographer from the Toronto Star,
way up there in Ontario,
the man who took the first pictures of
the Dionne Quintuplets,
left his homeland and
came to Joyce City
looking for some other piece of
oddness,
hoping to photograph the drought
and the dust storms
and
he did
with the help of Bill Rotterdaw
and Handy Poole,
who took him to the sandiest farms and
showed off the boniest cattle in the county.
Mr. Kingsbury’s pictures of the Dionne babies
got them famous,
but it also got them taken from their
mother and father
and put on display
like a freak show,
like a tent full of two-headed calves.
Now I’m wondering
what will happen to us
after he finishes taking pictures of our dust.
April 1935" (Hesse 170–171).
To Billie Jo — a little girl in the midst of growing up in Oklahoma — Canada is a long way away. It is surprising to her that the photographer would travel all the way there to take pictures of the drought. She seems somewhat resentful of the way he appears to be exploiting the tragedy (looking at their “sandiest farms” and “boniest cattle”). She also seems mistrustful of him: he made the quintuplets famous with his photography, but they ended up worse off for it.
The piece, of course, is merely one vignette of a complex, multifaceted — multi-people — reality, and should be taken with a grain of salt in any sort of analysis.
Rather more is known about The Toronto Star than about Mr. James Kingsbury. Joseph E. Atkinson became the editor in 1899 and brought the newspaper into its glory days. Atkinson wanted the The Toronto Daily Star to be a serious paper for the people: liberal, with a strong social consciousness, but independent of any political party. Under Atkinson, it became the biggest paper in Toronto. He owned The Toronto Star during the entire timeline of Out of the Dust, until his death in 1948 (thestar.com).
In particular, Atkinson’s social consciousness — and its translation onto the pages of The Star, suggest that there was more to the story than Billie Jo’s perception reveals. Given Atkinson’s staunch advocacy for human rights — including the beginnings of a national health plan — it would seem the exploitation of the quintuplets was an unintended consequence, and the paper may have been to blame.
Variation in economic practices
On a more dispassionate (but also more broadly verifiable note) the economies of both countries were in the throes of the Great Depression. However, this was a significant time of divergence between each country’s approach to their economic practices, and noticeably different forms emerged in each.
The practice of “social unionism” emerged victorious in Canada, while the United States embraced the form of “economic unionism” (Robinson 24). The reliance on two separate models resulted in divergence on the economic front (which was, after all, rather a central front during the so-called “dirty ’thirties” or dustbowl years), and represented a divergence on a scale somewhat higher than the more perceptual one detailed above.
Fast forward eight decades
Today, the Canada–United States border remains the longest peaceful international border in the world. Despite the differences in governance and economic practices, the nations have long been allies, and their cooperative relationship can inform the context of Billie Jo and James Kingsbury’s world, as imagined in Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust.
Works cited:
Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1997, 227 p. Print.
Robinson, Ian. “Economistic Unionism in Crisis: The Origins, Consequences and Prospects of Canada-U.S. Labour Movement Character Divergence” in The Challenge of Restructuring: North American Labor Movements Respond, edited by Jane Jenson & Rianne Mahon. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993, pp. 19–47. Web. 18 Nov. 2015 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~eian/Jenson_chapter.pdf
Toronto Star. “History of the Toronto Star: A century of a paper for the people.” Web. 21 Nov. 2015 http://www.thestar.com/about/history.html
