A radio commentator said recently that Canadians are in a strange mind set where disadvantaged children go hungry and it is called common sense.
After all, the deficit must be wiped out.
Many of our municipalities here on the Prairies got so far in debt during the 1930s that they were under the supervision of a provincial administrator.
Their problem was so many residents were “on relief” and so many others couldn’t meet their tax allocations that there wasn’t sufficient money coming in to meet the need. Starvation would have been commonplace if we had decided we must balance the budget at any cost.
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In addition to public assistance, many hundreds of rural storekeepers carried farm families by providing groceries on credit until harvest returns were in or some livestock was shipped. What little they obtained, these farm people shared.
We lived near a rail line. When freight trains stopped, empty box cars would disgorge young hungry men seeking food. Many of them prepared to work for it.
I recall one summer day we apologized to a transient because the only food my sister and I could find to offer him was some cold beef and baking powder biscuits. He took the biscuits, wolfed them down and thanked us profusely.
Many of these nomads went on to become some of Canada’s top businessmen, professionals, labor leaders and scientists. Many others lost their lives in the Second World War.
Let’s not get so bound up in cutting financial corners that we forget that a hungry child could one day become a Nobel prize winner.
