C/Iuplcr Four 63 
     
    
   
   
    
       
     
    
   
   
    
     After about six months, the club members felt 
     
     ready to set up Tignish Credit Union. Nineteen men, 
     
     among them ”a carpenter, a pensioner, a teacher, an 
     
     undertaker, four or five fishermen, and ten or eleven 
     
     farmers", signed the application for a charter. Each agreed 
     
     to buy one five—dollar share in the Credit Union to provide 
     
     it with start-up capital. Membership would be open to 
     
     anyone living in Tignish parish who paid a 25 cent 
     
     entrance fee and bought a share, which could be done in 
     
     installments of 25 cents, payable twice a month. By the 
     
     time of its second annual meeting, there were ”181 
     
     members, and a total of $1800 loaned out to 73 people". 
     
    
   
   
    
     Hardly had the Credit Union been chartered in 
     
     the spring of 1937 than the study clubs were “looking 
     
     into co—op buying”. A buying club was soon formed, and 
     
     began to make bulk purchases of coal, feed and groceries. 
     
     Gradually this rather informal organization became a 
     
     retail co—op: Tignish Co-operative Association. It was 
     
     chartered in 1943, though it had been functioning for 
     
     several years before that. By 1944, there were about 400 
     
     members; they already had an egg grading station, and 
     
     were starting to raise money to build a potato warehouse. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Three things are notable about this whole 
     
     development of the Co-operative Movement in the. 
     
     Tignish area. One is that the parish priest, Father John A. 
     
     MacDonald, approved of the Movement, but took no 
     
     active part in it. This contrasts with what happened in 
     
     many Island parishes, in which the priest’s enthusiasm 
     
     led to the organizing of a credit union or co-op store. It is 
     
     notable that, in quite a few cases, the Movement did not 
     
     survive in such a community once the priest was 
     
     transferred. The situation in Tignish, where the leaders 
     
     were all locals, likely contributed to the durability and 
     
     growth of these organizations, as, in fact, it still does. 
     
    
   
   
    
     A second fact is that those of Irish descent have 
     
     dominated the management of both the Credit Union and