The Origins of Cooperative Insurance on the Prairies

The cooperative movement on the Canadian prairies is a major element in the region's social and economic history. The main impetus behind the creation of the movement was the successive agrarian revolts that occurred between 1895 and 1945. Those revolts significantly disrupted the national Canadian political process, both directly by producing the Progressive movement, and indirectly by contributing to the third-party movements of later decades. In many ways, though, the political manifestations of the agrarian revolts were less important than their economic effects. Because of the occupational consciousness, regional loyalties, and aroused militancy stimulated by the agrarian uprisings, prairie farmers constructed a range of powerful economic organizations between 1895 and 1945. 1 These organizations, which affected nearly all aspects of rural life, increasingly became the most significant voices of the prairie rural societies and, perhaps, the most effective protectors of the region's economic interests.