”Families, tribes, dusted, swept away. Loaded cars, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand fifty thousand one hundred thousand two hundred thousand. They flocked to the mountains, hungry and restless – restless as ants, racing to find a job to do – to lift, push, pull, pick, cut – anything, any weight to bear, for food. The children are hungry. We have nowhere to live. Like ants that run for work, for food and above all for the land. “John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath, 1939 Between 1900 and 1929, Canada had the fastest growing economy in the world, with only a sharp but brief recession during the First World War. The 1920s were a period of positive growth. The standard of living was improving dramatically. Before the First World War, the American stock market was small and a relatively unimportant part of the Canadian economy. The situation suddenly changed leading to the onset of the Great Depression in the late 1920s, when the economy took a severe and devastating turn; impacting the lives of Canadians for nearly a decade. Many Canadians thought that the Depression was caused by the collapse of the wheat crop and not the collapse of the stock market because many Canadians and farmers depended on the growth of wheat because it made up the majority of their exports. , but as the wheat provinces were hit by a severe drought, wheat harvests collapsed leaving many farmers without work and money, causing a great impact on Canada. The causes of the Great Depression were due to overproduction and excessive expansion because Canadian companies expanded their goods industries so they could generate more profits. Yet economic activity shrank in the late 1920s, and companies found themselves with heavier debt and a lack of... half of paper... resulting in spending large amounts of money on produce ships, planes, weapons. and other essential war material. This led to industrial growth and unemployment which then began to decline rapidly as new jobs appeared. 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