Student Activism in the 1930s
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The Student and Youth Movements in Canada During the 1930s

Paul Axelrod
Professor, Division of Social Science
York University, Toronto

Like the United States, Canada had a lively student and youth movement during the 1930s. Its leading organizational instruments were the Student Christian Movement, the Canadian Student Assembly, and the Canadian Youth Congress. Socialist youth, linked to the newly formed Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (1933), and communist activists, primarily through the Young Communist League, campaigned for peace, social justice and social change.

Campus activism, however, was clearly a minority interest. Some five to ten percent of university students participated in one or more of the above organizations, while only about three percent of the young people in Canada actually attended university in the 1930s, less than one-third of the American participation rate, but higher than that in Britain and Germany. University youth either came from the middle class or aspired to it, and progressive or radical politics did not engage many of them. Indeed, there were dangers in being politically active. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police regularly conducted surveillance of university campuses, frequently in cooperation with university administrations, and left-wing students, especially those associated with communists, or even with causes that communists supported, were targeted. Openly challenging capitalism or British foreign policy could get students and professors into trouble with university authorities, politicians, and the police.

Peace was the one issue that did resonate among significant numbers of university students, and many were sympathetic to campaigns for disarmament during the 1930s. Most Canadians had family or friends who had been casualties of World War I; the painful memories lingered, and activists who organized petition campaigns and peace vigils had some success. However, pacifism on campus all but vanished when World War II erupted. Canada joined the war effort in September 1939, one week after Britain, and university students, by all accounts patriotically supported the cause. Eventually, so did Canadian communists, further diminishing the spirit of opposition. In any event, Defence of Canada regulations made it illegal to speak out against the war and most critics of government policy, on and off campus, kept their ideas to themselves.

Recommended Readings

Paul Axelrod, "The Student Movement of the 1930s," in Paul Axelrod and John G. Reid, editors, Youth, University and Canadian Society: Essays in the Social History of Higher Education (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989).

Paul Axelrod, Making a Middle Class: Student Life in English Canada During the Thirties (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990).

Paul Axelrod, "Spying on the Young in Depression and War: Students, Youth Groups and the RCMP, 1935-1942," Labour/Le Travail 35 (Spring 1995): 43-63.

Catharine Gidney, "Poisoning the Student Mind? The Student Christian Movement at the University of Toronto, 1920-1965," Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 1997, pp. 147-163.

S. R. Hewitt, "Spying 101: The RCMP's Secret Activities at the University of Saskatchewan, 1920-1971," Saskatchewan History 47, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 20-31.

Michiel Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

A.B. McKillop, Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791-1951 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).

Thomas Socknat, Witness Against War: Pacifism in Canada, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).

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