CAMROSE – For a few weeks it appeared that the president of the Associated Country Women of the World was coming to Red Deer next June.
But Ursula Goh of Malaysia had to decide which Canadian meeting to attend in 2006 She dropped the Red Deer trip in favour of an ACWW Canada conference planned for Regina in October.
Canada’s ACWW representative, Mildred Keith of New Brunswick, will take Goh’s place in Red Deer when that city hosts the triennial meeting of Canada’s Women’s Institutes.
A committee of 14 Alberta WI members has been working on the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada conference for three years, said committee member Alice Lowis. While the national headquarters organizes the speakers, resolutions and business agenda, the Alberta women are in charge of entertainment, tours and accommodation.
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The theme of the June 14-17 conference is “valuing our identity while adapting to change.”
Lowis said 300 women are expected to attend, including a large contingent from Newfoundland who want to visit relatives working in the oil patch. While that is fewer than other FWIC conferences, Lowis said it is a reflection of the aging membership.
Lowis has been a member of AWI for 10 years and she appreciates meeting other women and learning leadership skills. She said when she joined, she liked the fact that no one voted on whether she could be admitted. She also enjoyed the club creed written by Mary Stewart and read at the start of each WI meeting, which ends “let us not forget to be kind.”
Lowis is in charge of the national conference delegate bags and T-shirt that will have a stylized Alberta with mountains in blue and white. The abstract was designed by an artist in Bashaw, Alta.
Meanwhile, AWI members are making items to give away to delegates, including cedar disks to scent clothes, little message boxes, dish clothes and soap bars with an embedded rose.
Tours will take WI members to a malting plant in Alix, Alta., a bird farm and a rodeo and barbecue at the Jack Daines ranch near Innisfail, Alta.
To register, write Brenda Willsie, FWIC convention registrar, Box 423, Bowden, Alta., T0M 0K0 or e-mail blwillsie2005@hotmail.com.
