The Antigonish Movement blended adult education, co-operatives, microfinance and rural community development to help small, resource-based communities around Canada's Maritimes to improve their economic and social circumstances. A group of priests and educators, including Father Jimmy Tompkins, Father Moses Coady, Rev. Hugh MacPherson and A.B. MacDonald led this movement from a base at the Extension Department at St. Francis Xavier University (St. F.X.) in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
The credit union systems of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI owe their origins to the Antigonish Movement, which also had an important influence on other provincial systems across Canada. The Coady International Institute at St. F.X. has been instrumental in developing credit unions and in asset-based community development initiatives in developing countries ever since.
Goals As educators and priests, the leaders of the Antigonish Movement were primarily concerned with human and spiritual development. The title of Moses Coady's only book – Masters of Their Own Destiny – encapsulates this desire to see ordinary Nova Scotians achieve economic and social freedom.
However, Coady argued that for practical reasons "we consider it good pedagogy and good psychology, to begin with the economic phase ... that we may more readily attain the spiritual and cultural towards which all our efforts are directed."Moses Coady. Masters of Their Own Destiny: The Story of the Antigonish Movement of Adult Education Through Economic Cooperation. Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1939, p. 112.
Ordinary Nova Scotians he argued, had only themselves to blame for their poverty and vulnerability. They had permitted money and business to become mysterious forces outside of their control. Fishers and farmers for example, were exploited by marketing middlemen. Everyone was exploited by the usury of moneylenders. If they took the time to understand their circumstances and took the risks of co-operative action, they could achieve economic security and on that foundation greater freedom and self-realization. In a vision that has been renewed today in digital forms of mass collaboration, Coady argued that "the only hope of democracy is that enough noble, independent, energetic souls may be found who are prepared to work overtime, without pay" in order to shape a free and prosperous society.Moses Coady. Masters of Their Own Destiny, 1939, p. 18
Origins The origins of co-operatives in Nova Scotia go back to a cooperative store in Stellarton, founded in 1861. Co-operative creameries and fruit-growers co-ops were established by farmers to free them from exploitative middleman in the 1890s. Many early co-ops failed due to "poor management, domination by a few individuals and a lack of ongoing education."Jim Lotz. The Humble Giant: Moses Coady, Canada's Rural Revolutionary. Novalis, Ottawa, 2005, pp. 37–8.
However, the British Canadian Co-operative Society, a co-op store in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, set an example of sound co-operation. By 1917 it has 1,220 members and over $500,000 in sales. That year, it organized a conference on co-ops. The conference, which featured Ontario co-operative pioneer George Keen as keynote speaker, renewed local energy and enthusiasm for the idea.Ian MacPherson. Building and Protecting the Co-operative Movement: A Brief History of the Co-operative Union of Canada, 1909-84. Co-operative Union of Canada, Ottawa, 1984, pp. 46–7.
Adult education was the spirit of the movement, and Coady credits Dr. Hugh MacPherson and Rev. Jimmy Tompkins at St. F.X. with their early roles as "pioneer extension workers at the University interested in both adult education and economic cooperation."Moses Coady. Masters of Their Own Destiny, p. 6.
Jimmy Tompkins
Father Jimmy Tompkins played a key role in concocting the "intellectual dynamite" that was later set off in almost every village in the Maritimes.
Tompkins began teaching at St. F.X. in 1902. As vice-president of the university, he attended the Conference of British Empire Universities in London, England in 1912, and returned filled with ideas for ways that the university could become more involved in solving rural economic problems through adult education. British Workers Educational Associations, the Danish Folk High Schools, and Swedish Study Circles particularly interested him. And in Canada, the University of Saskatchewan's agricultural program, and Quebec's agricultural colleges and credit unions, caught his attention.Anne Alexander. The Antigonish Movement: Moses Coady and Adult Education Today. Thompson Educational Publishing, Toronto, 1997; pp. 65-66.
Tompkins had trouble making his case with the university's administration, and in 1922, St. F.X. sent Tompkins into "exile" as village priest in Canso, Nova Scotia. This did not slow the determined priest down, however. His approach to adult education in Canso triggered local action and a series of articles in The Halifax Chronicle which helped trigger a federal commission into the problems of the Maritime fisheries.Michael Welton, A new and disturbing presence: Father Moses Michael Coady and the United Maritime Fishermen. In Canadian Co-operatives in the Year 2000, Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, 2000, p. 101.
Beginning in 1924 Tompkins organized the first of a series of annual conferences bringing together farmers, educators, students, priests and rural development experts. In 1928, seeking a more permanent organization, some of the leaders in this group launched a campaign that raised $100,000. This initiative, combined with the report of federal commission on the fisheries in 1928, prompted St. F.X. to support the formation of an Extension Department in 1928.
Moses Coady
Moses Coady is generally credited with transforming the vision of his cousin Tompkins into an effective program capable of spreading across the Maritimes.
The defining moment in Coady's career came when he testified before a Canadian government commission in 1927. Drawing on his own experience and that of other movement leaders he maintained that the local economy could be revitalized if the right type of learning was cultivated in ordinary people: especially critical thinking, scientific methods of planning and production, and co-operative entrepreneurship.Welton, p. 97.
The report of the MacLean Commission was catalytic: in late 1928 St. F.X. organized an Extension Department to carry adult education to the people of the province, appointing Coady as its first director. The Canadian Department of Fisheries asked Coady to help the government "organize the fishermen".
Coady also invested considerable energy in catalyzing and strengthening wholesale co-operatives around the Maritimes: including the United Maritime Fishermen, the United Fruit Companies and the Canadian Livestock Co-operatives (Maritimes).
Adult education in action The Antigonish program of adult education employed three main components: the mass meeting, the study club, and the school for leaders.Stefanson, Brenda Gail. Adult educators in co-operative development: agents of change. Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan, p. 21-23
Mass meetings The field staff of the Extension Department worked with local people to organize meetings in schools, churches, and community centres.
People who heard Coady speak at these meetings described his speeches as "fiery" and "energizing". Coady challenged his audience not to accept their poverty but to take action to understand their situation, and then to think and to plan to change it. As he said many times, "You can get the good life. You're poor enough to want it and smart enough to get it." He would propose that they set up study clubs and that those who could read help those who could not.
Study clubs Study clubs typically met in members' homes, with the goal of understanding the factors keeping the members poor, to identify solutions, make plans, and take action. The Extension Department provided pamphlets and technical material on matters like agricultural methods, business organization, economics, and co-operative principles. The clubs studied local newspaper articles and any other materials that could help them understand their situation better.
The leaders and ideas emerging from this process often carried it into the next stage – organizing co-operatives and taking other initiatives to solve local problems.
The Extension Department linked the study clubs together through a network called the Associated Study Clubs, which facilitated information sharing and capitalized on the building momentum.
School for leaders Once the first co-operatives began, the Extension Department organized a six-week program at the university with courses in co-operative business, book-keeping, mathematics, economics, public speaking, and citizenship.
The program was taught by successful co-operative leaders from around the province. The goal was to reduce the risks of business failure, and to invigorate the momentum in each community with fresh ideas.
The program was taken to the villages by Coady and A.B. MacDonald. Roy Bergengren, director of Credit Union National of America, dedicated his book, Credit Union North America to A.B. MacDonald, who he describes as "an extraordinary organizer and an inspired leader who is known in every city, town and fishing hamlet throughout the length and breadth of the province". MacDonald went on to direct the Nova Scotia Credit Union League and then the Co-operative Union of Canada.Roy F. Bergengren, Credit Union North America. Southern Publishers Inc., New York, 1940, pp. 248
Co-operative development Coady's biographer Jim Lotz gives an example of how the link between the Antigonish approach, community development and co-operatives worked in the village of Judique, Nova Scotia.
By 1932 the Extension Department had sparked the formation of 179 study clubs with 1,500 members in Nova Scotia. Over the next six years, during the height of Coady and MacDonald's work in the villages, the number of study clubs rose to 1,110 with 10,000 participants.
By 1938 these study clubs had formed 142 credit unions, 39 co-operative stores, 17 co-operative lobster factories, 11 co-operative fish plants, and 11 other co-ops.Anne M. Alexander. The Antigonish Movement, 1997, p. 88
"Perhaps the most important reason why the Antigonish movement was able to have a significant, lasting impact was its promotion of credit unions."MacPherson, 1979, p. 132. The farmers, fishers, and miners who formed the backbone of the movement had little access to credit before the Great Depression, and lost what little they had as the downturn started to bite. With the help of Roy Bergengren and the American credit union movement, Nova Scotia passed the first sound credit union legislation in English Canada in 1932.
From Nova Scotia to the world
From its start in 1928, the Extension Department at St. Francis Xavier University was concerned with spreading its message well beyond Nova Scotia. It was particularly concerned about the other provinces in the Maritimes.
For example, by 1936 there were 200 study clubs operating in New Brunswick, and the legislature passed a credit union law that year. Wilfred Keohan, the New Brunswick Registrar of Credit Unions, wrote in 1939 that "There can be no doubt but that the experience in Nova Scotia had a marked influence as credit union enthusiasm knows no frontiers. The crystallized demand came from such bodies as the New Brunswick Council of Labour, the Trades & Labour Council, the Farmer's and Dairyman's Association, fishermen's organizations and members of the clergy who saw in credit unions an economic regeneration of their flocks." By 1939 ten thousand members were participating in 95 credit unions (including caisses populaires) in the province.Roy F. Bergengren, p. 250-51