The Rural Voice, 2003-01, Page 24WELCOME
ST WILLIBRORD C U
TO WINGHAM
HI
Changing times
As banks seek to get bigger, even
local Credit Unions must grow to
rneet customer demand for new — -
services
By David Blane
war
What do a Mennonite farmer
in Milverton, a retired
teacher in Goderich and a
small business owner in Clinton have
in common? There is a good chance
that they are among the nearly 1.5
million people in Ontario and 10
million people nationally that are
members of credit unions or caisse
populaires.
According to Finance Canada this
country has the world's highest per
capita membership in the credit
union movement. In 1997, 26 per
cent of Canadians used a credit union
or caisse populaire as their primary
financial institution.
This is quite a record for an
institution which began in Germany
in 1849 as an attempt by Friedrich
Wilhelm the Burgomeister of
Flammersfeld, Germany, to pool
local resources to prevent a bank
from foreclosing on a poor widow's
farm.
The idea came to Canada in 1900
when Alphonse Desjardins founded
Canada's first credit union, the
Caisse Populaire de Levis. Kathleen
Teillet recounts in an article on the
history of the movement that the first
deposit in the new institution was 10
cents.
In the 100 years since that deposit
20 THE RURAL VOICE
the movement has grown to include
over 2100 credit unions and caisse
populaires with more than 3700
locations and $110 billion in assets.
The essential difference between a
credit union and a bank is ownership.
Each participant purchases a share of
the organization, usually at a cost of
between $5 and $150. This entitles
the owner/customer to participate in
the credit union's decision-making
process and also entitles them to
profit sharing in the company.
In Ontario the first financial co-
operative was Ottawa's Civil Service
Savings and Loan Society,
established in 1908. Since that time
the movement in Ontario has grown
to include 297 credit unions
excluding the Province's caisse
populaires, which are primarily
active in northern Ontario in
communities with significant
francophone populations.
In southwestern Ontario the
movement is primarily a post -World
War Two phenomenon. The
Heartland Credit Union celebrated its
50th birthday in June of 2002. The
Goderich Credit Union was started in
1954 and St. Willibrord Credit Union
was granted a charter in 1951 as the
Dutch Catholic Immigrants (London)
Credit Union Limited.
North Huron Credit Union is typical
of what's happening in credit
unions. Formed when two small
credit unions joined, it set up shop
in a house, then expanded and
now is amalgamating with the
larger St. Willibrord Credit Union.
In many ways these three
institutions represent the beginning
and evolution of the credit union
movement in southwestern Ontario.
They are also representative of what
a credit union is — a financial
institution owned by its members and
designed to have the members'
money reinvested in the community
within which the members live — in
short, a community investing in
itself.
St. Willibrord's was established
and chartered to aid a particular
ethnic and religious community in a
particular area. Dutch immigrants
were arriving in Canada with limited
resources and were faced with a
banking system that was hesitant to
provide credit.
During the next 50 years St
Willibrord continued to meet these
needs, opening its services to
everyone in southwestern Ontario in
1977 and expanding until it consisted
of a dozen branches with over 38,000
member/customers.