Of Humble Origins

On October 18, 2023, the Nova Scotia Co-operative Council celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary with a glittery gala and public talk with the former first lady and celebrity author Michelle Obama, before a packed house in Halifax’s Scotiabank Centre. It was actually the second of two such extravaganzas, coming four years after an equally flashy evening billed as “A Conversation with Barack Obama.” Shelling out speaker fees to New York booking agencies for celebrities commanding $200,000 (U.S.) or more per appearance was now, apparently, aligned with the mission of a council representing community credit unions and small producers in rural and small-town Nova Scotia.

At centre stage with Michelle Obama that night was the bold and brassy chief executive officer Dianne Kelderman, who presides over an organization that lays claim to the heritage of the Antigonish Movement, founded a hundred years ago by two Catholic visionaries and dedicated to serving the poor in...