Ladies of Loyalist Parkway, Clue # 1

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The Chicken That Built a Hospital

The Prince Edward District Women’s Institute has earned a reputation for creative fundraising, including its support for the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital.

Long-time WI member Betty Cronk shared some great stories of those early days when local women worked together to support the local hospital. Many years ago, her farm neighbour, Norma Callow, brought a chicken to a meeting where fellow WI members bid on it. “We didn’t have much to work with, but we did what we could. The money we raised—I think it was $1.50 or something like that—went to the hospital.” The state of that chicken—canned, plucked or alive—remains uncertain, but the story is typical of how rural WI members used their ingenuity to turn their small resources into great things.

But the WI’s support wasn’t just about money. “In the early days, a lady in Wellington made the hospital gowns. The WI bought the material and Mrs. Huyck sewed them,” said Mrs. Cronk

“In those days, the hospital had no food service like it does today. So the ladies of the Wellington branch canned fruits and vegetables from their home gardens and gave them to the hospital.”

That spirit of creative fundraising still thrives. The Prince Edward District Women’s Institute supports the hospital foundation’s annual Festival of Trees fundraiser by decorating and donating a Christmas tree to be sold in a silent auction. And that is on top of the PEDWI’s annual donations to the hospital’s rebuilding project, made possible by the Prince Edward District’s famous Art and Craft Sale.

That’s how great projects still happen, one chicken at a time.

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