Skip header and navigation
Pilot Club of St. Thomas fonds
- Museum / Archive
- Elgin County Archives
- Part Of
- Pilot Club of St. Thomas fonds
- Description Level
- Fonds
- GMD
- textual records
- graphic material
- Date Range
- 1948-1993
- Storage Location
- R7 S1 Sh3 B2
- R7 S1 Sh2 B1
- Museum / Archive
- Elgin County Archives
- Part Of
- Pilot Club of St. Thomas fonds
- Creator
- Pilot Club of St. Thomas
- Pilot Club International
- Description Level
- Fonds
- Storage Room
- Archives Storage Rm. 107
- Storage Location
- R7 S1 Sh3 B2
- R7 S1 Sh2 B1
- GMD
- textual records
- graphic material
- Date Range
- 1948-1993
- Physical Description
- 60 cm of textual records
- ca. 100 photographs : b&w and col.
- History / Biographical
- The Pilot Club of St. Thomas was founded in September, 1948 as a business and professional women's service organization affiliated with and sanctioned by Pilot Club International. The club's organization meeting was held at the St. Thomas Y.W.C.A. on September 20, 1948. The club's thirteen charter members chose Mrs. Millicent Ashton to be the inaugural president at a meeting held November 1, 1948, and it celebrated receipt of its charter from Pilot Club International at a meeting held January 5, 1949.
Through the years the club fulfilled its community service mandate by raising and donating funds to support numerous local and national institutions and organizations, including the St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital, St. Thomas Memorial Arena, St. Thomas Memorial Continuing Care Centre, St. Thomas Y.W.C.A., St. Thomas-Elgin Art Gallery, Telecare-Elgin, Elgin County Pioneer Museum, St. Thomas Cenotaph Fund, Mental Health Elgin, Alma College, Elgin Manor, CNIB, Arthritis Society, and United Way. The club also supported several international relief organizations, including UNICEF, and from 1959 to 1973 sponsored a foster daughter from India, providing for her education from public school to graduation with a medical degree. The club's fund raising activities included holding rummage sales, fashion shows, teas, food sales, draws, and organizing bus trips to theatres, shopping centres and other attractions.
Effective November 17, 1977 the club was incorporated as the Pilot Club of St. Thomas Inc. under Ontario corporation number 000366069.
At a meeting held April 27, 1992 the membership voted to disband, and the club surrendered its charter to Pilot Club International and terminated its incorporation effective August 3, 1992.
Pilot Club International is a non-profit classified business and professional women's service club. It was founded by charter of incorporation dated October 16, 1921 in Macon, Georgia where it has always maintained its headquarters.
District 17, Pilot Club International's first district outside the United States, was established when the Pilot Club of Windsor, Ontario was chartered on February 17, 1947. By the late 1980s District 17 comprised thirteen clubs, located in Brantford, Hamilton, Markham, Mississauga, Niagara Falls, North York, Oshawa, Ottawa, Sarnia, Scarborough, St. Catherines, St. Thomas and Windsor. Mrs. Jean Conacher of Hamilton, Ontario is the only Canadian ever to serve as president of Pilot Club International, serving in that capacity in 1956-1957.
As of 2005 Pilot Club International reported sanctioning approximately 500 clubs with more than 25,000 adult and youth members in five countries: the United States, Japan, Bahamas, Singapore and Canada, with clubs based in Niagara Falls and Scarborough.
- Custodial History
- The fonds was donated to the Elgin County Library in the mid-to-late 1990s and subsequently transferred to the Elgin County Archives.
- Scope and Content
- The fonds consists of records created, collected and maintained by the Pilot Club of St. Thomas and its parent organization Pilot Club International. The fonds includes minutes of the club's meetings, scrapbooks created to document the club's activities, and miscellaneous records including club attendance records and standing rules as well as manuals, brochures and other materials issued by Pilot Club International and collected, used and maintained by the Pilot Club of St. Thomas.
The fonds is arranged in the following series:
1. Minutes, 1948-1992;
2. Scrapbooks, 1948-1992;
3. Miscellaneous Records, 1948-1993.
The fonds is particularly useful to those interested in researching the history of the Pilot Club of St. Thomas and its fund raising and community service activities, to genealogists seeking information about club members, and to those researching the history of Canadian community service clubs in general and Canadian women's community service clubs in particular. The fonds is also of interest to researchers concerned with the history of Pilot Club International and its Canadian operations.
- Name Access
- Pilot Club of St. Thomas
- St. Thomas (Ont.)
- Subject Access
- Women
- Community Service
Less detail