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Golden Anniversary at Stoney Creek ON FEBRUARY 19th, 1897, the first Women's Institute was organized at Stoney Creek, in Went-worth county, Ontario. On February 19th of this year the Stoney Creek institute held a banquet to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. And with all the changed conditions fifty years would inevitably bring, as we heard the Stoney Creek women review the past and plan for the future, it was very evident that the objectives, the initiative, and the spirit of the founders of the institute movement are alive in Stoney Creek today. At this anniversary banquet — a very gracious occasion with flowers and candles in the blue and gold institute colors, with good music and friendliness and the members' husbands as special guests, it was not difficult to go back in imagination to the meeting in Squire's Hall fifty years ago when one-hundred-and-one women, with Erland Lee acting as chairman, organized the world's first women's institute. It was not difficult to picture that first meeting because ten of the charter members were present as special guests: Mrs. H. P. VanWagner, Mrs. McKinley Morden, Mrs. J. B. Smith, Mrs. John Budge, Mrs. George Millen, Mrs. Selby Cornan, Mrs. J. B. Davis, Mrs. Walter Ptolemy, Mrs. E. B. Thomp-son and Mrs. Murray Neil. And be-cause the women actively in charge of affairs were, most of them, daughters or granddaughters of those who pioneered the movement. When the roll of past presidents was called, a number of women active in the work today, responded for their mothers who had passed on. Miss Muriel Bostwick of Hamilton was a guest in honor of her grandmother, Mrs. Adelaide Hoodless, the.Woman who conceived the idea of Women banding themselves together to study and work for better homes and a better country, and who had been brought to Stoney Creek by the Farmers' Institute to present her cause to the, women of Saltfleet township. The- guest speaker of the evening was Mrs. Gordon Conant, daughter of siveness of the women's institute fifty years ago. Such topics from their pro-grams as "How to find Time for-Reading", and "How to Get Along with as Little Help as Possible", she felt would be very timely today. "And" she said, "we talk about adult education as something new. The institutes ad it for fifty years." "The Brat president, Mrs. E. D. Smith. Another member present who has been a link between Stoney Creek and institutes in a wider field was Mrs. A. E. Walker. Mrs. Walker has been an active member, and sometimes officer, of the" mother institute since its early days; she has also been provincial president, national president, and Canadian representative at conventions of the Associated Country Women of the world; she is now collaborating with Miss Edith Collins in compiling an anniversary brochure, "The History of the Institutes for Fifty Years." T'HE present president, and chairman of the banquet, Mrs. Angus Jackson, commented on the progres- Mrs. Summers, provincial President of the Ontario institutes and Miss Anna Lewis, Superintendent, spoke of the inspiration the founders of the first institute had been to institute women ever since, and of the soundness of the objectives they set for the organization. These objectives, as written in the constitution "shall be the dissemination of knowledge relating to domestic economy . . . household architecture ... home sanitation . . . foods . . .clothing . .. and the more scientific care and training of children, with a view to raising the general standard of health and morals of our people; and the con-sideration of any problem, or the carry-ing on of any line of work which has as its object the uplift of the home or the betterment of conditions surround-