1930 - Annual Convention Report

              S I X T E E N T H A N N U A L C O N V E N T I ON 61
would concentrate for the next year on the training of leaders. Send your
Supervisors to our training class for leaders which is held during our Con­vention.
Your Supervisor is a member of the Provincial Executive for Girl
Guides and as such attended the Provincial Executive meeting held in Calgary
in March, giving the report of the seven Women's Institute G i r l Guides Troops
organized within the last year.
May I take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped so much
with the girls' work, especially the Council of the Alberta Women's Institute,
the District Supervisors, and the local Supervisors who carry on so well.
WOMEN'S INSTITUTES, A FORECAST
Mrs. W. F. Cameron, Davidson, Saskatchewan, President of the Federated
Women's Institutes of Canada.
It may have occurred to you that of late there has been much looking
backward over the origin and past history of the Women's Institutes in
Canada, and that now all Institute women are pretty well informed on this
matter. While we grant all glory to the initiative and prophetic vision of
those who saw in this movement a new outlet for the energies of rural women,
and a means of rendering constant service to the less fortunate of their
sisters, as well as the emancipation of themselves so that they were at liberty
to launch out into new ideas and new schemes of activity, we would not be
so modest as to deny that the reality has far surpassed the prophecy in
Women's Institutes, and that Mrs. Hoodless herself might scarcely recognize
the great matter that her little fire once kindled at Stony Creek, Ontario. A l l
honor to her and her immediate successors, who laid so truly the foundations
upon which we have reared the present structure of Women's Institutes.
W i t h every hope for the future, we might this evening get also into a pro­phetic
vein and consider whither we are tending, what we may expect to
accomplish, how our Institutes are to stand the test in the days that are to
come. The song of the H a r r ow school boy rings in my ears, sung in the
full fire and flush of youth, and the concluding lines of the first stanza make
an irresistible p a r a l l e l:
" W h i l e we look up and regretfully wonder,
What shall we look like when forty years on?"
F o r t y years— that far exceeds the allotted span for too many; say ten
years on, and let us be content to peep into the future after one decade.
Shall we have " suffered a sea change into something rich and strange?" Rich,
it is hoped, with the wealth of experience and achievement, but not so very
strange, still the Women's Institute, spreading its inspiration, its broad- sweep­i
n g influence, its practical humanitarianism, its definite feminism from coast
to coast, reaching to the furthest corner of the world, touching even the
islands of the sea. Will the Women's Institute maintain its domestic char­acter,
its vision of the ideal home, amid ideal conditions, with the finest
families provided with the most complete education, and with women freed by
the possession of the last thing in equipment, to enjoy with lessened toil the
most productive leisure? That seems a good deal to ask, but with faith in
our Institutes we are justified in such expectations, and the actual fulfilment
depends on the present trend of our energies. Are we then moving i n the
right direction, w i t h a clear eye, a measured pace and a steady head? Grant­i
n g that in some degree all these natural endowments are ours, let us examine
our attainments.