Alberta Pioneers: A Woman of the West

Narrator: Well, when her house and garden was built and she had settled in. She began to look about her and to worry about the problems of some of her neighbours. and she tells us of the first steps she took to do something about these.

Interviewer: Well, getting back to this beginings of the growth of the community and so on. One of your greatest interests in life I know was the United Farm Women's Organization in Alberta.

Irene Parlby: Yes.

Interviewer: Can you tell me how you became involved in it and how you became later to be president in 1916?

Irene Parlby: Well I think what started us out being interested in getting the farm women together was that we had a little what, we called, a country women's club we started. Mrs. Reed, was the really originator of that. she had a friend who came out from the old country who was studying women's organisations in Canada and she came here to stay. And it had always seemed to me that the farm women led a very lonely life, we were so separated. There were so few books or anything like that in the country. and we all got together few of us at least and started this little country women's club and tried to start a library. And that's what got me first interested.

Narrator: So she wrote to an English newspaper and to her friends over there and asked if they would send out any books they felt they could spare. Do you suppose these people in England cared enough to fill the need.

Irene Parlby: I got a wonderful response to that and then we, those of us who had a lot of books who could spare some gave some to bolster the library and we started, and that was our first library.

Interviewer: A wonderful start.

Irene Parlby: It was a good start and gave the women around a chance of getting hold of interesting books to read and has been going on ever since.