TRANSCRIPT

Membership in the Women's Institute
-My mother, in the 1940s, she joined the Belvidere Women's Institute, this section was called Belvidere. In this area, the Lennoxville Women's Institute was the first to be established in 1914. The Belvidere Women's Institute broke away from the Lennoxville Women's Institute because it was too far. It is hard to believe but for this area, they found it too hard to go to Lennoxville, it was horse and buggy days, and so they broke away in 1915. You have to think that in those days there were not to many cars out in the country.

-As my brother who just passed away commented, the Women's Institute was such a boom to my mother's life. She was working on the farm but once a month they got to go and she would found out what the rest of the world was like. That was the effect, I think, that it gave the women a chance to get out and express their opinions. When I got to school and got married later in life, I lived in Lennoxville when I was first married. A very active member came and wanted me to join the Lennoxville Women's Institute, so I did because I had known the work through my mother. In fact she was secretary of the branch for quite a while, I used to help her write up the minutes. I knew the work and I joined the Lennoxville Women's Institute and have been there ever since.

Activities and Support given by the Women's Institute to the community
-In the education, right from the very beginning of the Institute, they helped the little rural schools, they provided basins, towels, things so that children could learn how to wash their hands before touching their food. Some of the rural schools provided materials for the teachers to have a warm soup, of course the teacher or the student had to see that this soup would be warmed. All the county schools at the time had stoves, heating stoves, you could always put your container of soup to be warmed on the stove. It would only be soup but at least it was one thing that was warm.
-Well of course there were inoculations, the Women's Institute would organize it. There were days when someone would come to the school and have the inoculations of the students.

Official Resolutions and Acts of the Women's Institute
-We might make a resolution or an act locally, but if it was going to be something that would benefit the whole province, they would take it to the provincial organization and they would study these resolutions, and if they approved of it, the resolution was formed.

Activities of Women's Institute during the war years
-They did a lot of knitting, making bandages, the material was furnished but they would go to the outlets and after spend many hours making bandages. Besides, at home they did the knitting of socks, and hats that would cover the head and have a scarf fastened to them. They did a lot, and that was sent to a collection point in the province and then, from there, shipped overseas during the war years.
- Another thing they did for the help overseas is that when the canning with tins arrived, it was not always can tins, before it was bottles. The Belvidere Women's Institute had a canning machine, and they canned all their excess vegetables from the garden; these were shipped overseas.

Handicraft of the Women's Institute
-They are well known for making quilts, using different methods. They could be tied or they could be quilted with filling in between. They were great at that and they still do a lot of this kind of work. Let me see what else they would do… Well, they would have handicraft competitions provincially. It starts at the branch level, each year we are given a list of handicrafts that they want to have a competition in and local members make them. But unfortunately our members are like me, all getting older and our fingers are not so nip, so it is hard to get many people to take part in that but if they do it starts here and if you have much then you have to sort it out at the counting level and then the winners would go to the provincial level, every year they have a competition like that. The people who do the work, the articles come back to them, it is theirs to keep.
-Some branch would raise money with them. They would put them up for sale and if someone wanted them they could buy them, which provides an income for their work in the Institute. Then they would, in turn, turn back this money to the community by helping libraries or schools.

Changing landscape
-Yes, I was born and stayed here. I was born on the farm just up the road there; my grandparents had owned that, but when my father got married they bought this farm here; but they did not like this one so well, but they saved a lot here to build a house, bought a farm there and they farmed it in connection to the farm up there. Eventually they died and the farm was sold, and now it is hard to believe, but I remember as a child farming on that farm; now