Politics, Pitchforks and Pickle Jars: 75 Years of Organized Farm Women in Alberta

W.J.C. Cherwinski is a professor of history at Memorial University of
Newfoundland and the co-author of Lectures in Canadian Labour and
Working-Class History.

This official history was sponsored by the women of Unifarm, the most
recent of the women’s farm organizations that succeeded the women’s
auxiliary of the United Farmers of Alberta, the United Farmers of
Alberta, and the Farmers’ Union of Alberta. The book is intended, in
the author’s words, “to describe, to remember and to celebrate”
the “fellowship and toil” that members of women’s farm
organizations experienced over three-quarters of a century.

The historical narrative of the public development of the member
organizations is combined with the membership lists; convention
resolutions; significant doctrinal statements (e.g., “Why Every Farm
Woman Should Join the F.W.U.A. and Help to Build a Better Life for Every
Farmer and His Wife”); and platitude-filled interview statements from
noteworthy participants in “the struggle.” The text is interspersed
with record photos, primarily of convention delegates and executive
committees.

Langford characterizes women’s organizations first as auxiliaries to
men’s farm organizations, then as lobbying organizations with a
mandate to promote the improvement of rural life for women, and more
recently as organizations seeking to create links with less fortunate
communities of farm women. What’s missing from her rather sterile
account is the dramatic clash of personalities and ideas that farm
women’s organizations experienced as they tried to restructure their
organizations to deal with the declining social and political importance
of the “rural way of life,” which was, after all, the primary
objective of most farm organizations in Alberta and beyond.