We had a celebration in our town recently when our local co-op reached 60 years. Sixty years in business in rural Saskatchewan is something to be celebrated.
Backing up the co-op organization for exactly half of its 60 years was the local Women’s Guild, a group which also deserves recognition.
For 30 years, from 1947 to 1977, the Eston Co-operative Women’s Guild acted in support of the local co-op board, serving suppers and lunches at board annual meetings, assisting with in-store promotions, putting on baking demonstrations using co-op products, assisting with fashion shows and youth baking contests and taste-testing co-op products at meetings.
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The Guild members also catered to events for the Wheat Pool and credit union while being active in local and provincial Guild activities.
But, more than that, for 30 years the Guild served the larger community of which it was a part, contributing to the town’s first park, sewing for the hospital, supporting the senior citizens’ home, helping at Red Cross blood donor clinics and putting on an annual international night to which members were encouraged to bring guests to broaden their knowledge of the world and its people.
Reading through the Guild minute and scrap books is like reading a social history of the times.
In the early days, members would cater full meals for co-op annual meetings. The menu for the first the members catered, in 1948, consisted of cold ham, escalloped potatoes, mixed vegetables, salad, pickles, buns and pies.
The members were a social lot. Their first whist party “cleared 86 cents.”
Another, more elaborate, whist party saw three ladies in charge of sandwiches, two responsible for cakes, one in charge of coffee and one to look after cream.
In May 1950, two members attended a special meeting regarding emergency flood relief for Manitoba. The presidents of all organizations in town formed a sewing and supply committee; the councillors of the urban and rural municipalities would form a welcome committee and supply billets for flood refugees.
This social history of a town and area is as important as the business and economic history, yet too often this is the history, with its details of ordinary life, that is lost to us. Steps must be taken to preserve it, wherever it exists, for this is the stuff of which histories are made.
