Chapter Four ()7

operative movement. After the collapse of Island Co-op Services (an attempt to provide Island co—operators with a wholesale organization) co-ops all over the Island went into decline and many disappeared altogether. Morell too was affected by this. In that community, as in a good many others, the original leaders died or moved away, leaving no one to follow them. In Tignish, however, co-operation was firmly entrenched; there were plenty of younger leaders, as well as many still active founding members. This is part of the answer to the question of why the co- ops and the Credit Union continued to do well in Tignish. Another part of the answer lies in the general character of the community: it had been informally co—operative since its founding, it had carried out an enormous co- operative project in the 18505, and a good-sized one in the 18905; it had begun a small but successful co-operative organization to deal with the fishing industry’s problems in the 19205, and it was satisfied with its new institutions from the 19305. In the early 1960s, it had also built a rink without outside support or even help from the Village Commission.

Remoteness is yet another factor in the success of the Tignish co-ops. In the 19505, making the fifty—mile trip to Summerside was still a major undertaking. And Charlottetown was twice that distance. In other words, Tignish went its own way, partly because of geography and the state of the roads, as well as because of its relative poverty. And the Fisheries, Tignish Credit Union, and the Co—op were ably and conservatively managed during this whole period, with a brief exception for the Credit Union. Not for the first time, Tignish was left to develop in its own way, and its own way worked.

Early in the 1960s, thanks to the government of the time, there was a resurgence of interest in organizing co-ops to meet new needs in many Island communities. In Tignish, there were many fields with acid soil which