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Social and voluntary organizations play a central role in the creation and maintenance of rural and small town communities. For more than 100 years, the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada have been active in Canada’s agricultural communities and they continue to address issues important to the contemporary farm and rural community. At present, limited historical records are available on the Peace River region’s Women’s Institutes. Through a research partnership involving faculty at Northern Lights College, the University of Northern British Columbia, and local museums, archives, and libraries in the Peace River region, this collaborative and interdisciplinary project records and documents the history of the area’s Women’s Institutes. Our goal has been to work with the Peace River region Women’s Institutes to document their history, role, contribution to the community, and the challenges they have faced. It is expected that this project will make a major educational contribution. The website makes available local history materials for use by local teachers in the development of relevant history and social studies curriculum material. These materials will also likely be of interest to teachers at a provincial and national level. In addition, the project has fostered partnerships among education and heritage institutions in Northern communities with the joint goal being to encourage Internet access to historical records. Finally, it has strengthened the archival and technical skills of community archives and museum workers so that they can preserve and make accessible collections to a broad range of users both on-site and via the World Wide Web.The project collected information through a set of oral histories with long-time Women’s Institute members using a standard set of basic interview questions (see appendix 1). During the interviews, records, photographs and other documents that trace the history of individual Women’s Institutes were digitally scanned. This digital information has been stored in regional museums and archives (some examples can be found in appendix 2, and appendix 3). Copies have also been stored at the Northern BC Archives at the University of Northern British Columbia. Oral histories are a widely recognized and used tool for recapturing individual memories as part of studies on historical re-creation. The interviews were conducted during the summer and fall of 2004. Interviewers travelled to the homes of the interviewees to record the interviews. Some interviews were individual; several were interviews with a group of Women’s Institute members. After completion of the data collection, the oral history tapes were copied and stored in the regional museums/archives and the Northern BC Archives at UNBC. Paper copies of the oral histories have been returned to interviewees and will be stored in the regional and UNBC archives. A photograph of the interviewees and their oral histories are also mounted on the project website to increase their accessibility. The oral history method has been through appropriate Ethics Review procedures and all participants have received clear notice about their rights in the process and the disposition of their contributions. The oral history interviews is to provide the members of the Women’s Institutes with an opportunity to talk about their involvement with the Women’s Institutes and its activities in the area. The questions are designed to guide and prompt them to remember parts of their involvement. Not all the questions applied to every interviewee, and participants were encouraged to add other topics depending on their own experiences.
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