This time line consists of local, national, and international events relevant to the Canadian experience. It serves to contextualize the growth and evolution of VIU.
Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia Online
February 1930
- Cairine Reay Wilson was the first woman appointed to the Senate in Canada
March 1930
- Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi began his walk to the sea known as the Salt March in defiance of the British government's tax on salt and monopoly of the salt trade in India
December 1931
- The Statute of Westminster goes into effect: Canada is granted full legislative independence in national and international affairs, with the Crown represented by the Governor General
June 1931
- The census recorded the population of Canada as 10,377,000
December 1933
- Prohibition was repealed in the USA after more than 13 years
May 1934
- The Dionne Quintuplets were born at Corbeil, Ontario
July 1934
- The Bank of Canada Act created the Bank of Canada in response to the 1933 Royal Commission on Banking and Currency
1935
- Canadian-American physicist Arthur Jeffrey Dempster discovered uranium -235, an isotope of uranium that would be used in producing the first nuclear chain reaction
- The federal Employment and Social Insurance Act was passed in Canada
September 1935
- Nazi Germany passed the anti-Semetic Nuremberg Laws, depriving German Jews of their civil rights, forbidding marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans, and barring Jews from professional employment
September 1936
- The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was created
July 1937
- Amelia Earhart disappeared while trying to circumnavigate the globe by plane
1938
- Nanaimo's N.1 Esplanade mine closed after extracting 18 million tons of coal since its opening in 1883, the most of any mine on Vancouver Island. This was also the site of BC's worst mining accident: on May 3, 1887, 150 people were killed as a result of two explosions in quick succession
- William Aberhart's Alberta government passed the Métis Betterment Act, enabling Métis to apply to have land set aside as reserves
- Canadian artist Joe Shuster and American Jerome Siegel published the first Superman comic
May 1939
- The National Film Act created the National Film Board which pioneered developments in social documentary, animation, docu-drama, and direct cinema. Its films have won hundreds of international awards
September 1939
- Canada declared war on Germany, seven days after Britain and France. The first Canadian troops left for England in December. Although obliged to go to war at Britain's side, PM William Lyon Mackenzie King's delay of a week was a symbolic gesture of independence