14

Cooperatives and adult education

The Extension Department of St. Francis Xavier University (StFX) in Antigonish became very actively involved in adult education, the development of production and consumer cooperatives and community development in the 1930s under the leadership of Father Moses Coady and Father Jimmy Thompkins. One facet of this work, strongly associated with Catholic social reform in the first half of the 20th century, was the promotion and development of handcraft skills. The movement saw handcrafts as fitting within its grassroots vision of cooperative development.1 Hagen's work as a teacher of pottery ensured a comfortable fit with the Extension Department's programs.
(1) Ian McKay, The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1994), p. 163.

15

''Religious sister throwing a pot'' (no date)
1940

16

A pottery for the residential school

In the 1930s, Alice Hagen spent her own money to start a pottery at the Indian School at Shubenacadie and trained nuns to teach the craft. But the nuns were transferred and the pottery closed. (1)
(1) Jim Lotz, Head, Heart and Hands: Craftspeople in Nova Scotia (Halifax: Braemar Publishing, 1986), p. 97.