Omineca Herald, 6 July 1938: Labour Minister George S. Pearson on the closing of the relief camps

Read from the OCR text, 10 Oct 2026. The provincial Minister of Labour’s account of the spring of 1938: of “the 4,700 men recently in camps, 1,600 were those who had come to B.C. from other [provinces]” only a few months before November 1937; “Only 2100 men with over one year’s residence in the province were affected by the orders to close camps”; “This year, as in 1937, the province had arranged with the Dominion to close its camps.” The province then offered the recent arrivals return transportation to their places of previous residence.

What it shows: the forestry relief camps were winter camps, closed each spring by arrangement with Ottawa; what was new in 1938 was the refusal of relief to men with less than a year in the province. See pattullo-bloody-sunday.