In the summer of 1933, Humphrey Mitchell (1894–1950), a Labor Party Member of Parliament for the working-class riding of Hamilton East, toured Europe for several months, visiting England, Germany, and Poland and spending three weeks in the U.S.S.R., including Soviet Ukraine. While in Berlin on his way back, he sent the following terse message to the mayor of Hamilton, John Peebles: “Just arrived from Russia. Conditions there are very bad. They are down to rock bottom. Never saw such suffering in my life.”

Mitchell’s bleak comments were published on 18 July 1933 on the front page of Windsor’s Border Cities Star under the headline “HAMLTON LABOR M.P. TELLS SUFFERING IN RUSSIN / THINGS ARE VERY BAD IN SOLVIET.” The same short report was carried on page one of Toronto’s Globe on the following day, when it also appeared in various versions and under slightly different headings—though almost all of them featuring the word “suffering”—in the Winnipeg Free Press, Regina Leader Post, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Edmonton Bulletin, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Province, and no doubt other Canadian dailies.

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