Fonds paa-6446 - Cornelia Wood fonds

Cornelia Wood, nee Railey, was born to Henry Newell Railey and Sedelia Edith Courtney on a farm near St. Joseph, Missouri on April 14, 1892. In 1900, Cornelia and her family moved to Oklahoma City. They moved again in 1904 and settled on a farm in Stony Plain, Alberta. Cornelia attended High School in Edmonton and later attended Normal School in Calgary. At the age of 16, Cornelia Railey graduated from the Calgary Normal School and was posted to the Warden School to teach grades 1 to 9. Here she taught for four years until her marriage to Russell Edgerton Wood of Edmonton, on December 24, 1912. Both Cornelia and her husband settled in Stony Plain until their deaths: Russell on December 30, 1963 and Cornelia in November 1985. Cornelia Wood was a charter member of the Stony Plain Women's Institute formed on December 8, 1913. She remained an active participant at the local and provincial levels serving as the Stony Plain Branch's first secretary and later serving as president for many years. From 1931-1935 she was Provincial Supervisor of the Women's Institute Girls Club and from 1937- 1941 served as Provincial Secretary. Cornelia Wood also worked as a demonstrator and lecturer for the Department of Agriculture under the auspices of the Women's Bureau Branch from the late 1920s to late 1930s. During the late teens and early 1920s, Cornelia Wood campaigned for Frank Oliver and other Liberals. In 1933 she was converted by the teachings of William Aberhart and the philosophy of Social Credit. She began helping to organize a number of Social Credit Study Groups in her area. In 1940 she won the constituency of Stony Plain and held her seat until 1967, with only a brief break from 1955-1958. After 1941 Cornelia served as the chair of the Social Welfare Sub- Committee of the Alberta Post-War Reconstruction Committee. She firmly believed that the ideal of every woman should be to raise a family and to be a good homemaker. In order to do so, however, she felt it was also necessary for women to take part in public life. Cornelia believed that women understood how to best promote social welfare programs to enhance the family. Another one of her major concerns was the fluoridation of public water supplies. Cornelia felt that fluoride was an unnatural additive, which would ultimately cause widespread health problems among the populace. Cornelia Wood was chairman of the Stony Plain Consolidated School Board from 1933-1939, chairman of the Alberta Division of the Community Planning Association of Canada from 1955- 1960, member of the Stony Plain District Library Board for many years and mayor of Stony Plain from 1953-1954.