The Co-op Revolution

Publisher: Caitlin Press Inc.

“We were undercapitalized, inexperienced, practiced democratic decision-making and some of us smoked dope occasionally. All elements that would make us grow as human beings and as business people. We ran a helluva show.”

In the spring of 1975, a free-spirited Jan DeGrass backpacked across Canada in search of adventure and greater meaning in life. When she arrived in Vancouver, she met a group of people committed to social change; together they re-imagined the food industry in BC.

In The Co-op Revolution: Vancouver’s Search for Food Alternatives, author and journalistDeGrass writes about her journey as a founding member of the Collective Resource and Services Workers’ Co-op. Bounding to life during the heady, activist, grant-funded years of 1974–1980, the CRS Co-op became one of the most successful co-ops in BC and was committed to co-operation and worker ownership. While the decade of the seventies is remembered for its new wave of co-ops—usually organized by a “free-flowing” collection of women and men in their twenties—CRS was unique in its success. Among its many accolades, it created the Tunnel Canary cannery, the Queenright Co-operative Beekeepers, Vancouver’s popular Uprising Breads Bakery and a food wholesaler, which later became Horizon Distributors. The economic, political and social skyline of Vancouver was changing. For some, the co-op movement was about crushing capitalism; for others it was simply about buying cheap, wholesome food from people they trusted and living in communal camaraderie. No matter the pursuit, co-operation was the answer.

Jan DeGrass writes in Sechelt, BC, where she is the Arts & Entertainment columnist for Coast Reporter and editor of Coast Life magazine. For the past twenty-five years she has written in every genre, from sparkling arts news to exotic travel narrative to a cookbook of potluck recipes. She received a national award for a business article that furthered Canadian co-operative literature, and she was a winner for Best Coverage of the Arts by the Canadian Community Newspapers Association. She is the author of a credit union history book and her first novel, Jazz with Ella (2012), based on her student experiences in Russia. Her short stories have appeared in Canadian Living, Chatelaine and Room.