Members share fond memories as longtime organization folds

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This article was published 21/10/2016 (3453 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Luella Noble joked that she hasn’t been around for the entire 101-year history of the Boissevain women’s volunteer group, which met for the final time this month.

“I’ve only been there 70 years,” Noble, 92, said with a laugh.

She joined the Boissevain Women’s Institute in the 1940s for the same reason as many, to spend time with other women while their husbands were busy.

In Boissevain, they held classes on cooking, sewing and interior decorating.

“Being a new bride I needed to have some help,” she recalls.

Those classes and the charitable efforts these women shouldered are long over.

In more recent years, the group organized guest speakers, gathered for coffee and took tours of rural Manitoba — but that too has passed. On Oct. 11, the eight remaining members gathered for their last meeting. They reminisced and — like they always did — they laughed.

“You’re going to miss the people,” Noble said.

“We were losing members and the ones that were there are only getting older. After all I’m 92, I don’t need to be in there either.”

Among its accolades, the group is celebrated for starting Boissevain’s library.

The group, which has since been renamed the Boissevain-Whitewater Women’s Institute, created a space for the public, although it was mainly women and children, to pass the time, chat or take out a book.

As Noble recalls, rural women from the farm only came into town on Saturdays then. As their husbands “played pool or something,” the women socialized.

Although local women became less dependent on the women’s institute, the community-based organization continued playing a vital role, helping with fundraisers, cleaning the cemetery and donating to 4-H clubs.

As the organization evolved, it reduced its external work and transitioned into more of a social gathering.

Dorothy Coupland attended a few of the group’s field trips, and was intrigued enough a few years ago to become a WI member. She will miss the companionship.

“We’re all older. None of us are young — that’s the problem,” Coupland said.

“And we can’t get younger ones to join, but I know when my kids were young, if they’re in sports and stuff, you just don’t have the time.”

At its height, the club had about 50 members.

Judy Busby was “green as grass” when she became president eight years ago, when the group merged with Whitewater’s chapter in the 1990s.

“It was nice to meet people and make friends,” she said about joining in 2000, “and I guess I just kept going.”

The first women’s institute was founded in Ontario in 1897, and quickly spread to hundreds of other communities across Canada and in Britain.

Women’s institutes also proposed resolutions, which were voted on at provincial conferences and forwarded to appropriate governments.

Brandon still has a chapter and the branch in Broomhill recently celebrated 65 years, Coupland said. Women’s institutes still flourish in Ontario, where more than 280 chapters are located.

Though the Boissevain-Whitewater group dissolved, its last members, including two women who drove from Killarney, are keeping busy. Most are in their 80s, but remain active in various groups like the legion auxiliary and church.

Take Noble, for example. She plays rummy and crib at the seniors’ homes, sings in a choir and plays piano.

“I’m not home any afternoon,” she said.

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