Democracy Rising: Politics and Participation in Canada by Bill Freeman

Author:Bill Freeman [Freeman, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Democracy, Civics & Citizenship, Political Ideologies, Commentary & Opinion, Political Science
ISBN: 9781459737693
Google: Sy9ADAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30300475
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

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Alphonse Desjardins and the Caisse Populaire

On December 1, 1900, Alphonse Desjardins, his wife Dorimène, and 130 residents of Lévis, Quebec, met and founded the Caisse Populaire de Quebec. This was the first caisse, or credit union, in North America. Today credit unions are the foundation of the co-operative financial institutions that now spread across North America, and the Desjardins Movement that has grown from that first meeting in Lévis is by far the largest and most successful.

Alphonse Desjardins was a middle-class fonctionnaire, as he would be called by Québécois today, who worked as a stenographer for governments in both Quebec City and Ottawa. In 1897, he was in a parliamentary committee meeting and heard testimony about usurious rates of interest being charged farmers and working people. One example was of a farmer who borrowed $150 and by the time the loan was discharged had paid $5,000. Desjardins was shocked, alarmed, and determined to do something about it.

For the next three years he studied finances and credit institutions. Then he focused on financial co-operatives that were then emerging in France and Germany and corresponded with a number of the European leaders of that movement. Once he understood the benefits of the co-operative model of financial institutions, he went ahead and founded the Lévis caisse populaire.

The location of the first caisse was in the Desjardins home in Lévis, a modest white wooden house that is still standing. Today it operates as a museum commemorating the family and the humble origins of the Desjardins movement. Dorimène, Alphonse’s wife and the mother of their ten children, operated the caisse in its first years. The original leger books, showing deposits as small as ten cents, are on display.

Alphonse and Dorimène worked together. By 1906 special legislation was passed in the Quebec Legislative Assembly and caisse populaires received legal recognition. The Desjardins were devout Catholics and had close associations with the Church. Priests played an important role in promoting the cause. Many of the first caisses were located in parish halls and are still there to this day. The movement spread rapidly through rural Quebec because there were virtually no other financial institutions. In Montreal and other large centres, the movement took longer to establish.

In 1908 Alphonse made his first trip to the United States. At that time many French Canadians were moving to New England to work in textile mills and other factories. He helped groups establish savings and loans co-operatives in New Hampshire, the first credit unions in the United States. He went on to Ontario, where he helped to establish the Civil Service Savings and Loans Society, a financial co-op for federal civil servants. Today it has become the Alterna Credit Union, one of the largest in Ontario. By 1912 he founded the first caisse populaire in Ontario to serve francophones. By the time of his death in 1920 Alphonse Desjardins had helped to found 132 caisses in Quebec, 19 in Ontario, and 9 in the United States.

Today the Desjardins Movement

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