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A Prairie Parable The 1933 Bates Tragedy, Bill Walser

Great Plains Quarterly

It was one of the more harrowing episodes of the Great Depression. Ted and Rose Bates had failed in business in Glidden, Saskatchewan, in 1932 and again on the west coast of Canada the following year. When they were subsequently turned down for relief assistance twice, first in Vancouver and then in Saskatoon, because they did not meet the local residency requirements, the couple decided to end their lives in a remote rural schoolyard, taking their eightyear- old son, Jackie, with them rather than face the shame of returning home to Glidden as a relief case. But it was only …