Digital Collections of the Women's Institutes of Ontario

This Virtual Archives of the Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario (FWIO) provides a platform to some of the many documents the Women's Institutes (WI) have created across the Province of Ontario since 1897. This allows the original documents to remain within their communities, while researchers across Ontario, Canada, and the world can access them electronically. They will learn about the rich communities in Ontario, conduct family research, and discover the wonderful work that has been created by WI Members.

Included in the collection are:
1. The award-winning Tweedsmuir Community History Collections, which document the history of a community. There have been approximately 2,000 branches through the years across Ontario. It is estimated 1,300 Tweedsmuir Community History Collections have been created, with about half of the collections not yet digitized.
2. The complete series of the FWIO newsletter, The Home & Country, from 1933 to present.
3. Minute and record books, including the minutes of Stoney Creek, the first WI Branch in the world. (Documents less than 50 years old are not available due to privacy considerations.)
4. Documents from the Erland Lee Museum, a National Historic Site, including the Original WI Constitution.
5. Contributions from WI members and the public on buildings, monuments, and other items showing the WI's community involvement.
6. Published books and other miscellaneous documents, such as cookbooks, program books, and photos.

These documents are searchable across the platform, within a series, or within a document, as much as possible and if not hand-written. For those documents that are not searchable, they can be easily browsed. Within this site is also a record for each branch, district, and area. Each record contains general information, where available, such as whether active, when organized and disbanded and the physical location of the Tweedsmuir Collection.

The Virtual Archives was launched in March 2016 and continues to grow. We gratefully acknowledge the Government of Canada’s support, through the Documentary Heritage Communities Program of Library and Archives Canada. This program provided the funds for the platform, as well as digitizing many of the documents.