Ninety-five years is a long time for anyone, but for the Mary Riley Women's Institute it's the bittersweet celebration of a dying out organization.Past and present members of the Mountain View County area branch recently gathered to celebrate their branch's 95th anniversary.Starting as a way for women in rural areas to connect with each other, develop or acquire homemaking and leadership skills, the Women's Institute movement in Alberta peaked between 1940 and 1965 when there were more than 350 branches. “When it first got started in 1917 you didn't have cars to go to town and for the women they were mostly at home so it was a nice day out for them,” says member Shirley Felker, adding it wasn't uncommon for women to bring baby buggies when they took wagons or walked to the meetings.Numbers have dwindled and today there are only about 50 WI branches in the province. Like many of the groups still in existence, the Mary Riley WI has a small member count, with 11 members, but, unlike many groups, the branch's membership is actually on the rise.“We actually just welcomed three new members,” says Felker. “A few branches have folded and we do have trouble getting new members to join. People are busier now with families and jobs.”Mary Riley's oldest member is Felker's 90-year-old mother, Peggy Farrar. “She joined after I did,” laughs Felker, who first joined the group when she moved to the area when she was younger, but stopped attending meetings as life took over.“I liked it then, but I used to help my husband on the farm and in the fields a lot,” she says. “I also had four children; life and time made it difficult.”But after the passing of her husband, Felker became active in the group once again and has been enjoying how busy it keeps her and the friendships she's established.She encourages women of all ages to consider joining their local WI, if just for the support the group offers to its members.“It's a friendly group. We love doing things for other people and we're a very supportive group,” she says, adding that the small number of members has its positive side, allowing members to establish closer bonds with each other and with their communities.The members of the WI branches are active with volunteering and fundraising that stretch globally.“We donate to our provincial branch, that money is then forwarded to the federal level and on to whatever cause we are supporting in the world at that time,” she said.Felker says many members also volunteer at local seniors' lodges, school and hospitals.The first AWI branch was organized in Lea Park by Martha Graham in 1909.Graham used her own experience with WI in Ontario. In fact many of the women who came to Alberta from Ontario or the United States used their experience to establish WIs in the province.The Mary Riley branch takes its name from one of those women. It's said that Mary Riley was travelling by train through the provinces, when a group of women from the Olds area heard Riley discussing WIs and got the idea to start their own.Riley would go on to become the first president of the group, and would be honoured by having the group named after her.At the height of the WI movement, as groups were being created, organizers often ran into the problem of having too many branches in one area, so members became creative in naming their branch.Several branches were located in the Millet area: Millet (named after the village), Tillem (Millet spelled backwards), Golden Glow and Wang (named after school districts), and Lady Tweedsmuir (named after a WI patron and wife of a former Governor General of Canada).Although creativity is encouraged when it comes to the naming of a branch, the ‘Women's Institutes Act 1929', which sets out guidelines for forming and operating branches, requires that the branches all include ‘Women's Institutes' in their name.
