LLL of Manitoba was founded in ____.

Nancy Gajdosik (Pioneer) ~ II look back on those days of having a “tiger by the tail” and the energy to match. Those were times when we were unstoppable, forging ahead into foreign, often hostile territory, yet not allowing ourselves to be deterred…and thank goodness we did!

Thirty years has clouded my memory of details of the first LLL meeting here in Winnipeg, but I do retain many impressions of that time. Women were so ready in 1970 for the ways and means to counter the taking-over (and all-too-casual replacement) of natural mothering that had insidiously crept into family life over the years, primarily by a health care society dominated by male physicians. That upstart organization called La Leche League brazenly challenged the status quo and refused to go away, quietly or otherwise.

I look back on the groundswell of interest those first meetings generated. Our initial meetings had upwards of 30 mothers and almost as many babies. One group quickly became two, then three as we realized the walls simply couldn't be pushed out any further. Our second and third Leaders were certified within a year of our first meeting.

My being a nurse and a clinical nursing instructor in labor and delivery at our largest hospital was both a blessing and a curse, but it permitted a recognition that enabled the League and the “fanatical” women in it to be taken seriously and with a somewhat cautious, yet growing respect.

We never thought ourselves radical or fanatical, but we certainly were a threat to the establishment and as such had to tolerate the slings and arrows of suspicion and criticism. As the word and the wisdom of the “womanly art” spread, we who were there from the beginning lowered our soap boxes and began to function more as a team with the medical and the lay population in our community.

The greatest proof of how sound was the message and example set by the League was in our beautiful, healthy, happy babies, and the growing number of women putting mothering over any other aspect of being successful, satisfied people. There was absolutely nothing new or different from the beginnings of humankind being advocated through the League, but under the care, conviction and wisdom of the League and because we were no longer alone, like voices in a wilderness, we were rising to challenges and realizing potential in ourselves as women and mothers that we could not have otherwise.

The values espoused by the League and that special sisterhood of woman to woman, mother to baby, family to family fostered for all of us a richness of life that continues in LLL circles to this very day… and must continue if this fractured world of ours is to survive. I am humbly proud, I am honored, to have helped spread the message and example of the League.

[back to top]