Antigonish Movement
The title of Moses Coady's only book – Masters of Their Own Destiny[1] – encapsulates this desire to see ordinary Nova Scotians achieve economic and social freedom.
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.
The conference, which featured Ontario co-operative pioneer George Keen as keynote speaker, renewed local energy and enthusiasm for the idea.
[8] Beginning in 1924 Tompkins organized the first of a series of annual conferences bringing together farmers, educators, students, priests and rural development experts.
Moses Coady is generally credited with transforming the vision of his cousin Tompkins into an effective program capable of spreading across the Maritimes.
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.
The Antigonish program of adult education employed three main components: The field staff of the Extension Department worked with local people to organize meetings in schools, churches, and community centres.
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.
The Extension Department provided pamphlets and technical material on matters like agricultural methods, business organization, economics, and co-operative principles.
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.
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".
[11] 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.
Canned lobsters brought better returns than fresh groundfish that had to be sold to buyers on the wharf for any price they cared to offer.
"[14] 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.
[15] By 1936 Coady and MacDonald were increasingly traveling beyond the Maritimes to Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, where their speeches and ideas helped ignite local credit union movements.
Bergengren wrote in 1940 that "out of the Nova Scotia experience has come a new and most valuable study club technique that will have a far reaching effect on the whole future of the credit union movement."
By the end of World War II the credit unions and co-operatives of the Maritimes were an acknowledged success, gaining international recognition.
The study clubs for which the movement was noted declined however, and attention had shifted from human emancipation towards building stronger, more professional institutions.
[19] Coady acknowledged that the credit unions were promoting thrift and household budgeting, and showing members by example how much money they could bring to bear on their communities' problems through co-operative action.
Innovations like the Saskatchewan Mutual Aid Board – the first private sector deposit insurance scheme in Canada – focused on protecting the savings of members.
[21]Antigonish-style study clubs, unlike traditional seminars or workshops, require all members to collectively manage a group process even before they launch a co-operative.
Members can take a hard look at each other's capabilities and weigh their collective prospects with a clear head while they learn the skills they need to launch community ventures.
By the end of World War II a series of leaders from Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen to Edward Filene to Alphonse Desjardins to Moses Coady had shown that cooperative movements could reach and empower poor populations in a way that deepened the economic gains of capitalism while alleviating some of its undesirable social effects.
These small groups managed and governed financial services are similar in idea to the Study Clubs of Antigonish movement, and avoid the possible negative outcomes of Credit Unions becoming more corporate and moving away from members' active participation and control.
These small group models are particularly popular among women, perhaps as they face barriers in joining even the local cooperatives with men as dominant members.
These informal groups have become immensely popular, often coming together to form 'federations' for greater collective bargaining power and reaching economies of scale, essentially becoming and behaving like formal cooperative.
Societies are once again at cross-roads for balancing between individual and corporate wealth, group / cooperative enterprises, and more shared-economies where everyone can share benefits.
