Building a Better and a Sounder Newfoundland”? Reassessing the History of University Extension, 1959–91

Across Canada in the twentieth century, livelihood strategies based upon harvesting and selling primary commodities were displaced by those based upon working for wages. Universities were key institutions in this transformation. Initially, universities enrolled few full-time students, and extension departments supported primary commodity producers through developing cooperatives, disseminating information, and engaging in outreach activities to enhance the quality of rural life. As more Canadians began working for wages, universities withdrew from extension work and enrolled more students in degree-credit and continuing education programs. This article contributes to our understanding of the socio-political role of universities in Canadian history through analyzing the work of the Extension Service of Memorial University of Newfoundland (mun). While existing accounts of such work focus on themes of community development and governmentality, this article narrates the involvement of mun’s Extension Service in transformations of gender-specific livelihood strategies. In the 1960s, extension helped fishermen and rural homemakers create more effective commodity-producing households through nurturing cooperatives and regional development associations and through disseminating home economics information. In the 1970s, mun’s Extension Service withdrew from community development fieldwork and built a course provision infrastructure through which thousands of men and women each year built their capacities and credentials for wage employment

Extension (predicate logic) · Geography · Canadian Identity and History · Computer Science · History