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Many people have camped at Mara Lake, but few know of the camps of a different sort that were there during the early part of this century. During the depression years, two relief camps for unemployed men were set up at the present sites of the Mara Lake Provincial Park on the south end of Mara Lake and Hummingbird Resort midway down the lake.

The camps were established in August of 1931, to provide relief work for the unemployed men all over the valley, and were funded jointly by the federal and provincial governments. The men worked on the roads between the camps for a wage of about $2.00 per day for single men and $2.80 per day for married men who were supporting a family.

Not long after the camps were established, an extreme financial hardship was experienced because of Great Britain pulling out of the gold standard. The federal government was forced to pull out of the relief efforts because of the incredible costs. This caused the provincial government to halt work in the camps and cease paying the workers.

In 1932, the provincial government convinced the federal government to re-enter the relief effort with a new system of paying the unemployed men. Rather than providing them with only room and board, the government paid a wage for work done on the roads and then deducted the cost of room and board, leaving roughly $0.20 per day for the workers. The relief camps remained open until the summer of 1936 when it was decided that there was enough employment available. The camps were very expensive while they were open, but they supplied many men in the Enderby area with what they needed to survive the harsh depression years.

Things did not look good for anyone in the 1930's. Thousands of people found themselves without work and without any money. Some people such as farmers and men who did find work at extremely low wages did manage to weather the storm. The Enderby area actually fared relatively well through the depression - there was lots of cheap food and clothing - but many men were still left to "ride the rods" and hope that they would find something better.

It wasn't long before the government was forced to compensate these unfortunate men. It did so by constructing about 200 "relief camps" throughout the province. Two of these relief camps were located on Mara Lake. Camp Number One was built on the present site of Mara Provincial Park, and Camp Number Eighteen was located where the Hummingbird Resort is now located. These sites were the location of German Prisoner-of-War camps during the first World War.

The camps were constructed by J.N. Grant of Enderby and his nine-man crew. They constructed a kitchen in the centre with hot and cold water and all the modern conveniences. The kitchen opened into a large dining room that could seat all fifty men in the camp. Two bunkhouses with room for twenty-five men winged off the kitchen.

In these camps, food and clothing as well as shelter was provided. The men were initially paid $2.00 for single men and $2.80 for married men who were supporting families. They worked on the almost non-existent roads between the two camps with picks and shovels.

Soon after the establishment of these camps, the federal government realized the enormous costs involved in such a venture. This was compounded by Britain leaving the gold standard, making financing almost impossible. The federal government withdrew funding for the relief effort and the provincial government was forced to keep the camps open on its own. The work in the camps was stopped and there was nothing left to do. Ray Koskimaki recalls that during this time some of the inmates of Camp No. 1 went to a large open field on the present site of Crystal Sands Resort to play soccer. Others occupied themselves by playing monopoly and dreaming about owning vast amounts of money and property. The men were now carefully screened to make certain that they needed the relief money. No money was actually given to the workers during this time; on the other hand, they had to do nothing to receive free room, board, and clothing.

In 1932, the Hon. R.W. Bruhn, minister of public works for British Columbia, finally struck a deal with the federal government that split the funding of the relief camps between the two governments. It was decided that the inmates could be paid for work they did on the roads, and their room, board, and clothing could be subtracted from that. It was more economical if the government could get some cheap labour out of the unemployed for badly needed road work along the east side of Mara Lake. During this period, the army administered and controlled the camps.

At this time, the workers were earning $7.50 per month or about $0.20 per day. This may seem absolutely unbearable to us by our wage standards today, but for the unemployed it was either that or nothing at all.

Most of the men in the relief camps at this time were not lazy bums who could not support themselves but naturally hard-working men who simply could not find any work to do. However, there were some men present in the camps who never did think that they were getting enough. It was these men that stirred the others in the camps all across B.C. to go on strike and threaten to make a "hunger-march" to Vancouver. As things turned out, many of the men in the camps felt that they were not in such a terrible position and the march never materialized.

It was actions like these that caused many residents of the Enderby area to feel a little animosity toward the unemployed. As far as the locals could see, the men in the Mara Lake relief camps were doing almost no work and were getting paid for it. They thought it was very unfair that they should have to work long hard days just to survive while the "inmates" of the camps lived in comparative luxury.

For the next three years, the relief camps remained operational in much the same way. The men were rotated in and out of the camps in order to provide relief to as many men as possible. Some of the men who applied for work in the relief camps were turned away because it was decided that they did not need it. Others were in such terrible condition from going without enough food for so long that they had to be placed in concentration camps for a short time to build their strength before they could enter the relief camps.

In 1935, the provincial government stopped its funding of the relief camps and the federal government took full control of the local relief effort. The armed forces no longer supervised the camps. By the end of 1936, the government decided that the relief camps were no longer necessary because there were enough jobs available to the men outside of the camps. It is unclear what happened to Camp No. 18 after this, but Camp No. 1 was given to the community and was made a Class "C" Park (public--now Mara Lake Provincial Park).

Despite the bad conditions and unthinkable wages of the relief camps by our standards today, they were a blessing for the men who worked in them. Without these relief camps at Mara, hundreds of men from the Enderby area would have been forced to "hop a freight" out of town and hope for better luck at the next stop.

Dawn Gerlib, Niels Konge, Kurt Schubert
ALF School, 1989