Children on family farms in southern Alberta during the Great Depression contributed labour to the farming operation that was essential for their family’s economic survival. Cale Harris, Virginia Smith, Lorne Smith, and Carma Anderson all provided examples of this work during their oral history interviews. As young children, all four of them primarily helped their mothers inside the home and in close proximity to their residence in places like the garden and chicken coop. When Lorne got older, he reported that he was put in charge of tending to his family’s sheep and other related tasks. Carma and Virginia helped their father with harvest and their mother with picking strawberries. Cale helped drive the truck to spread grasshopper poison in the fields and trimmed caragana hedges. These are just a couple of examples of the wide range of work that children would contribute on these family farming operations.

In Lara Campbell’s book “Respectable Citizens” she says on page 20: “Children’s formal and informal labour was crucial to family survival”. While Campbell’s book is focused on eastern Canada and urban centres during the 1930s, the same is true of the labour of children in southern Alberta during the Great Depression.

Bibliography:

Lara Campbell. Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario's Great Depression. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.