Moses Coady - Launching A Movement

Launching A Movement

The report of the MacLean Commission was catalytic: in late 1928 St. FX 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”.

Through the years of the Antigonish Movement, financial support came from St. FX, the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation (two New York-based charities), and the local Scottish Catholic Society. Coady’s own staff resources were supplemented by collaboration with the Department of Fisheries, and later by widespread volunteerism in the villages.

The chronic decline in the fisheries gained new urgency with the onset of the Great Depression. Mines closed and thousands of miners were thrown out of work. Out-migration slowed, but for all the wrong reasons. Many jobless emigrants returned home.

Through the new department, Coady linked adult education with co-operative business ventures in the distinctive blend that became known as the Antigonish Movement. The immediate priorities of the Extension Department were the formation of ‘study clubs’, the emergence of new co-operatives and a school for leaders.

Study clubs gave ordinary Maritimers an opportunity to critically analyze the dynamics keeping them poor and to study possible solutions. The clubs helped people to plan and then successfully launch co-operatives in many fields: agricultural marketing, fish canning, dairy, retail sales and housing. Once the co-operatives were launched, the school for leaders kept their managers and directors continually stimulated with new and fresh ideas and business methods.

Coady also invested considerable energy in catalyzing and strengthening wholesale co-operatives around the Maritimes: including the United Maritime Fishermen, the United Fruit Companies of Nova Scotia and the Canadian Livestock Co-operatives (Maritimes). For example, he brokered conflicting interests and provided timely technical support in the formation of the United Maritime Fishermen. UMF was a trade association for the region’s fishing co-ops “with a strong adult education component”. It promoted canneries and provided cooperative marketing services to fishermen to help them capture a greater share of the profit from their catch.