The Assiniboia Community Housing Cooperative (ACHC) fonds document the history and function of the Cooperative, and its predecessor, the Campus Co-operative Association. The records span the years from the inception of the Co-operative in 1967, through its existence 21 years later when the records to that date were deposited with the University of Alberta Archives.
The records, largely textual, required a fair amount of sorting when received at the Archives. Papers were removed from binders, and duplicate records disposed. There was a lot of duplication of records, as individual executive members along with each ‘house’ in the Cooperative maintained a set of minutes, audited financial statements, policies and procedures manuals, along with forms for completing maintenance checks and house inventories. As well, the collection was weeded of financial ephemera (invoices, returned cheques, bills, etc) since summary financial records existed. An original listing provided by a then member of the ACHC aided the arrangement and description process.
The records have been sorted into ten series, including: the Cooperative Movement; Executive Committee Records; Minutes (Board and General); Financial Records; Membership Records, Property Management Records; Property Expansion Records; Legal Advice Records; Historic Records; and the Newsletter (The Cooper). Some of the series are very small, while others like the Financial records series and Property Management records series are necessarily arranged into sub-series to better organize the material. There is a complete set of minutes from the 1960s through to January of 1987. Membership records are particularly complete for the mid-1970s to the early 1980s; earlier membership records, particularly for the 1960s, are sketchier. The records are in good physical shape.
The Assiniboia Community Housing Cooperative records reflect an interesting alternative to standard student housing arrangements available on the University of Alberta campus in the mid-1960’s. It was, writes Rod Olstad in a 1988 Gateway article, “the first organized, yet unofficial, co-ed housing at the U of A.†Principles of democracy were essential to the Cooperative, with their elected executive, membership votes on all matters of house policy and operation, and safeguards to protect individual members from potential financial liability, etc. Co-op members were instrumental in lobbying the University in 1973 to abandon plans to demolish much of the low-cost housing in the North Garneau neighbourhood, demanding instead that this housing be retained and renovated to ensure that low-cost, alternative housing was available for students.
The ACHC records can also be viewed as a part of the larger national Co-operative housing movement emerging in the same period. The unique living arrangement that is the Cooperative, with its accompanying problems and triumphs, is well documented in these records.
