February 23, 2023, marks the centennial of the oldest continuous service club in our city - the Rotary Club of Red Deer.
The first Rotary Club was formed on February 23, 1905, when Paul Harris, an attorney in Chicago, Illinois, invited three friends to help start a club of business people and professionals which would foster a spirit of fellowship and provide service to their community.
A unique concept was that there would be one representative of each branch or type of business and profession, thereby ensuring that the new service club would be broadly representative of the community as a whole.
The name Rotary was adopted because of the initial practice of rotating the club meetings among the members’ places of business.
Rotary clubs were quickly formed across the United States. In 1910, the first Rotary Club in Canada was formed in Winnipeg. This made Rotary an “international” organization.
The idea of creating a Rotary Club in Red Deer was started by Elmer Ainsworth, a provincial road inspector and a former member of the Lethbridge Rotary Club. He got a warm response to his proposal due to the conditions which the City faced at the time.
Red Deer was coming through one of the most difficult times, economically and socially, in its history. The community had been devasted by the horrific First World War, with young men suffering the greatest losses in terms of lives and health.
In 1918, just as the War was finally coming to an end, the Spanish ‘flu epidemic claimed the lives of more people than had been killed in the War.
Then the economy collapsed. There was the worst inflation ever recorded, the result of governments borrowing vast sums of money to support the War effort. That was followed by the worst depression ever experienced up to that time. Unemployment in Red Deer soared to more than 25%, many of whom were young veterans recently returned from the War. Many local businesses either went bankrupt or else quietly closed their doors.
Red Deer had an agricultural-based economy and local farmers were particularly hard hit during the early 1920s.They faced the harshest drought since the start of settlement. The American government closed the border to most agricultural exports. Farmers trying to sell their cattle often found themselves deeper in debt when the animals sold for less than the cost of sending the animals to market.
The local electric utility company, the Western General, was unable to meet its payroll. The Red Deer Hospital went bankrupt and had to be taken over by the Provincial Government. The City of Red Deer became effectively bankrupt and had to cut all expenditures to the absolute bone when the banks refused to grant it any more credit. The Public School Board was only able to pay its teachers after some of the trustees took out personal bank loans.
To show how far behind the City’s recreational facilities became, after the roof of the local covered rink collapsed with a heavy weight of snow, nearly two decades passed before a new replacement arena was built.
Finally, in late 1922, the economy finally hit bottom and things began to slowly improve. Because of the camaraderie of having survived such desperate times and because of the urgent need for some sort of community organization to start to rebuild the City’s public services and amenities, Red Deer’s businessmen and professionals decided it was an ideal time to start a “self help’ group such as a Rotary service club.
An organizational meeting was held in early February. Turn out was good and 19 individuals agreed to sign up as charter members. An interim executive and board of directors was selected. A charter was approved by Rotary International on February 15.
On February 23, 1923, the 18th anniversary of its parent organization, the Rotary Club of Red Deer was officially chartered at a ceremony in the Knox Presbyterian Church Hall.
To be continued.
Michael Dawe is a Red Deer historian. His column appears on Wednesdays.