In the 1940s, the Manitoba Royal Commission on Adult Education
investigated directions for the modernization of the province in the
post-war era of change. It was charged particularly with looking at
rural Manitoba's cultural, educational, and leadership opportunities in
the wake of new technologies, dwindling populations, and altered
political and social affiliations. The commission engaged Jim Giffen,
then a young sociologist from the University of Toronto, to undertake a
detailed field study of three rural Manitoba towns in this
context.Giffen's extensive study examined the towns of Carman, Elgin,
and Rossburn, all significantly different in terms of their ethnic
makeup and level of political and organizational sophistication. He
remained in the province for a year and a half, at the end of which his
report, an analysis of "education for leadership," was considered "too
revealing" for public release. It remained in the Ontario Legislative
Library until it was retrieved, 50 years later, by well-known historian
Gerald Friesen, who has written an extensive postscript to the report.As
a snapshot of rural agricultural life in prairie Canada at a time of
great change, the study is invaluable. Despite the differences in the
three towns, they retain some common characteristics that define a
particular socio-cultural view of the larger world. Giffen looks at
characteristics such as leadership in the community, ethnic differences,
hierarchy of roles, participation in organizations, and aims and
activities of young people. Friesen's postscript provides a wider
context to this study, and an assessment of what these differences and
commonalities meant to the province.
