Great Depression in Canada.

One of Canada’s major twentieth century historians, Harold Adams Innis, famously characterized the country’s economy as a “staples economy.” By that he meant that in the world economy, and especially in world trade, Canada was a major producer of raw materials and that these products were then exported to other countries, where they were manufactured into products that ordinary people could use. Canada’s major export, wheat, was turned into bread and other food products by other countries. Canada was a major producer of aluminum ore; other countries turned the aluminum ore into more elaborate manufactured goods. Canada was one of the world’s major miners of gold, and the trees that it harvested from the woodlands in northern British Columbia provided the raw materials for a large number of the houses built in the United States.