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About Progress
The Canadian Progress Club
“It's Great To Be a Canadian/Soyons Fiers d’être Canadien” is the motto of the Canadian Progress Club, an all-Canadian service club having no international affiliations. Membership and its privileges are open equally to men and women. Progress members seek the advancement of the communities in which their individual clubs are located. Progress is entirely Canadian in concept and development. Each local club conducts its own affairs and its own charitable projects. There is no classification system within the Club. Progressians are men and women from all walks of life who enjoy hands-on involvement in charitable activities. In particular, members are proud of their contributions in the area of under-privileged children, and of helping to foster the cause of the physically, mentally and socially handicapped people of Canada through service to the community. In doing so they meet new friends and have fun! In addition to their commitments to local communities, on a national level, Canadian Progress Clubs proudly support Canadian Special Olympics through the Canadian Progress Charitable Foundation.
History(The following are excerpts from "A Brief History of the Canadian Progress Club" by Lee Irwin) In the beginning...Maurice Guenear and James Brennan founded the Canadian Progress Club in 1922. Its first club was the Canadian Progress Club Toronto Downtown. This club’s first meeting was held on November 16, of the same year. One hundred businessmen and professionals joined together to form the club. Included in this group of men was former Toronto mayor, Nathan Phillips, who was an Honorary President of the Toronto Downtown club until his death on January 7, 1976.
As
the mother club of Progress, the Toronto Downtown Club had a rather unique
and humble beginning. Maurice Guenear, a barker at the Canadian National
Exhibition, had come to Canada fortified with a copy of data and forms used
by a service club in the United States. Following the close of the
exhibition, Guenear joined with James Brennan in opening an office in the
Star Building at Bay and Adelaide Streets in Toronto, for the professed
purpose of organising service clubs throughout Canada. They operated under
the name of “Canadian Progress Club, Extension Department”. The
next step taken by Guenear and Brennan was to enlist the services of field
representatives, who were to be located in Toronto, London, Hamilton,
Ottawa, and other centres. Their task was to seek out men who possessed the
sum of twenty-five dollars, and to whom their sales talk about the high
ideals and objectives would appeal sufficiently to cause them to part with
their money. The representatives retained $12.00 and $13.00 went to the
Extension Department. On
November 23, 1922, officers and directors were elected for the Toronto
Downtown Club and weekly meetings were held thereafter. On December 14, the
first service effort was the collection of $79.72 for the “Star Santa
Claus Fund”. About
this time several of the members discovered that all was not well. The
offices of the Extension Department had taken on the appearance of a social
club. Guenear had become indebted, to an embarrassing degree, to creditors,
and those creditors were pressing for payment. Guenear promised to reform. At a meeting of directors in March 1923, to which Guenear and Brennan had been summoned, the then-secretary made an exposure of matters and laid charges against Guenear. Several days later, however, he departed, unannounced, leaving considerable debts. The Toronto Club undertook to pay much of the debts as it considered it might have received some benefit. The majority of the debts, however, were Guenear's personally, and no individual or collective responsibility was accepted for them. Another catastrophe which befell the Toronto Downtown Club in its formative years was the loss of its money through the failure of The Home Bank. Growth and Expansion Across the Country...The
National office of the Canadian Progress Club was formed in 1923 with only
one affiliate club, Toronto Downtown.
In 1928 Toronto West was formed and in 1931 the Montreal Club was
chartered. The Progress Club, by 1949, had ten clubs. There was a club in
London (1937), Collingwood (1938), Creemore (1940), St. Laurent (1946) and
Quebec (1949). The
Toronto Downtown Club formed a women’s auxiliary in 1933, after which a
number of women’s auxiliaries were formed by various clubs. The Canadian Progress Club was centrally based until the late 1960s and early 1970s when the western and eastern divisions were in the embryo stages of development. There was not one club outside of Quebec and Ontario until 1965, when Halifax and Edmonton Downtown were established. In 1977 the first all-women’s club was chartered in Calgary, under the name of “Calgary Eves”. Today, Progress is divided into the Eastern, Central, Great Plains and Western Regions. With clubs now located in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, Progress is represented from sea to sea! The National body was created as an organisational tool. The officers of the National body are chosen from members of the affiliated clubs. National and Regional Officers are elected annually. In order to keep members informed, a quarterly newsletter, The Progression, is published. Clubs are solicited for newsworthy items and photographs. This newsletter also features articles dealing with service clubs, activities at each National Convention, Foundation Donors, individual achievements, messages from the National and Foundation Presidents and their Boards, and reports of interest from the Executive Director. The Canadian Progress Charitable Foundation...National Officers recognised a long standing need for machinery within the Canadian Progress Club, at the National level, to allow formation of a registered charitable body, legally enabled to issue tax deductible receipts for donations received. In 1967 plans were formulated and on January 25,1968, under the auspices of two Past National Presidents, James McArthur and Arthur Rose, the Canadian Progress Charitable Foundation was chartered. It received a Letters Patent from the federal government as a non-profit, no share capital corporation and was registered as a charitable organisation with the Department of Corporate and Consumer Affairs in Ottawa. The Foundation has a permanent charitable number, which when provided on its receipts, permits donations to be deductible for Income Tax purposes. CPCF's first fund raising undertaking was a Canada Day pin promotion. While not too successful, it was a beginning. There followed a period of dormancy but with the determination of a number of the Foundation’s Governors, in the 1980s, various channels of activity and sponsorships were investigated. Since that time, it has flourished financially and now sponsors the travel and outfitting of Canadian Special Olympians. National Conventions...
A National Convention of the Canadian Progress Club is held annually. The first recorded convention occurred in 1951 at Quebec City. Since then, conventions have been held in various locations across the country, including Banff, Calgary, Saskatoon, Vancouver, St. John’s, Montreal, Ottawa, Sherbrooke, Halifax, Collingwood, Edmonton, St. Catharines, Brampton, Toronto, Peterborough, Muskoka, Niagara Falls, Ste-Adele, London and Mt. Tremblant. There was also one convention held outside Canada. In 1977, Progressians convened in Bermuda! Whither
Progress?
As
to the future of Progress, any short-term membership problems will only
harden the endeavour of the membership to ensure that this organisation
continues to earn the respect which its predecessors have passed on. As in
the past, its members’ confidence and assistance will help to accomplish
the goals and objectives of Progress both today and well into the next
century.
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