Kin Club Has Long Legacy of Large-Scale Community Projects

In the fourth in our series of interviews focusing on the past, present and future of local service clubs, NACTV sat down with the local Kin Club, formerly the Kinsmen and Kinettes.

Kin is a uniquely Canadian organisation, founded in 1920 by a WWI vet who was unable to join Rotary due to that organisation’s rules at that time around multiple members representing the same profession. He missed the camaraderie of his time serving, and looked to recreate that spirit of togetherness and service in his own community.

It was that same desire that prompted Wayne Hollier to become one of the founding members of the Kinsmen Club of Neepawa in 1976. His life at the time centred around his young family and he found several others who were looking for the same type of organisation; in fact, by the time the club was officially chartered they had already grown to 48 members. The following year, his wife Noreen was one of the founding members of the Neepawa Kinettes, made up of the spouses of members of the Kinsmen Club. With an upper age limit at that time of 40 years old, members found themselves with a lot of common interests and experiencing the same stage of life. Families were always included in special events, making it ideal for their needs.

Early projects of the club included raising funds for a fetal heart monitor at the hospital, installing a water fountain at the arena, and running a computers in the schools program. Fundraising activities began with the humble bake sale but scaled up to their annual Windfall Dance which raised funds for Cystic Fibrosis. The first speaker they ever had at their Windfall Dance was, at that time, the longest-lived person in Canada with CF, who was in their twenties. The median age of survival as of 2019 is now over 54 years.

The Kinsmen Play Park was the first large-scale project the club developed, constructing all of the equipment locally. It was dwarfed a few years later by Kinsmen Kourts, an affordable housing for seniors facility, which was the first of its kind in the community. In 2021 Kinsmen Kourts 2 was completed, adding an additional 48 suites.

By the time Amanda Naughton-Gale joined the club over a decade ago, the Kinsmen Club had already become the Kin Club, with all genders welcome and no age restrictions, and membership was much smaller. Still, the club continues to carry out projects that, as the organisation’s motto says, ”serve the community’s greatest needs”. Naughton-Gale was recently elected to the board of Kin Canada, serving as vice president.

As of 2022, the Neepawa club has only six members. Naughton-Gale expressed some concern over that because, “If we leave, what kind of hole do we leave in the community?" but the remaining members are all very active and when you include the families of the members, the number of bodies is greater.

The story of the decline is the same as with many other organisations - families face increasing pressures from jobs, volunteerism has changed, and people are reluctant to commit themselves to anything long-term.But Naughton-Gale hopes that people seeing how large projects can be accomplished with groups of people working together will inspire them to join - if not Kin then at least one of the other local service groups.

"If you want to see big things happen in your community, you have to belong,” says Naughton-Gale. “You have to get out there. You have to involve yourself. You have to make it happen."

The Holliers say they are at peace with the idea of the local Kin Club folding as long as something else arises that fills the need in the community. Many former Kin Club members now sit on the boards of various non-profits or belong to other service clubs, and the projects they sponsored will stand in the community for a long time.