Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 14
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Popular Culture Review
made strategies about their legal status, financial stability, or access to political
rights.
Although the monthly meetings were important occasions for socialising
and for becoming informed on important issues of the day, the Women’s Institute
organisation also gained a reputation for being a leader in home economics
education. "‘In the regular monthly meetings the members have an opportunity to
pass on to each other the information gained in the school of practical experience....
The members often refer to the Institute as “ The Great Rural University.’”" The
association with continuing education was not limited to those monthly meetings
or tips shared from members’ life experiences. The idea of the WI as “rural
university” came from the fact that through this oi^anisation, the Province of Ontario
sponsored formal training in food preparation and nutrition through schemes know
as “short courses.” These educational initiatives have caught the attention of
historians.
Terry Crowley has argued that WI initiatives provide one of the earliest
Canadian examples of continuing education opportunities for women because the
organisation worked in conjunction with the provincial Department of Agriculture
and the Macdonald Institute in Guelph to provide the services of travelling
lecturers.'- These instructors would visit rural communities to offer short courses
of instruction in cookery, garment construction and agricultural techniques for
women. This mode o f course delivery arose out of the reality that the new
educational facility built in Guelph, Ontario in 1903 at the provincial agricultural
college was failing to attract farmers’ daughters in the numbers that the school
administration had predicted. The logical solution seemed to be that if young women
could not come to the school, then the school should go to them. The very first
short courses were offered off-site by Macdonald Institute in conjunction with the
WIs of Haldimand County in 1912.'''
Many rural women eagerly took up the opportunity to study without
leaving home, at a cost that was affordable, and on a schedule that suited the rhythm
of their unpaid work in the home or on the farm. The 1913 report to the Department
of Agriculture described the typical format: “The attendance at these demonstration
lecture courses varied from twelve to twenty, the time period usually occupying
each afternoon for ten days.”'"
This educational opportunity enjoyed sustained popularity over the next
four decades, as the statistics provided in annual reports amply demonstrate. Even
during World War I, when branch members were preoccupied with war work,
attendance at the short courses remained consistently high. In 1915-16, fifty-five
courses were offered throughout the province with an attendance o f21,643. During
the war, rationing created a market for information on food conservation and a tenday course was developed entitled, “Food Values and Cooking.”'^ During the 1930s,