A Glance at the Past
By John-Paul Stewart
Last month, we started to look at some of the church's past youth groups. We'll continue along that theme again this month.
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One significant group at the church was the Canadian Girls in Training, or CGIT for short. The national organization started in 1915 as a Christian organization for teenage girls. It wasn't strictly Baptist; the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches also supported the program nationally in those early days.
The CGIT motto was to “cherish health, seek truth, know God, serve others, and thus with Jesus' help become the girl God would have me be”. They were immediately recognizable by the blue and white uniforms they wore.
It is unclear when the First Baptist chapter was started but it would appear to have been in the 1950s under the leadership of Miss Agnes Lee during her first stint as Director of Christian Education at the church. The accompanying photo shows them in 1958. In the front row at the far left side is Elizabeth Suprun. Many readers will have known her as Liz Harvey.
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For several decades CGIT remained an important part of First Baptist. The second photo shows them in 1972 with their leaders Margaret Clark (back row, left) and Lori Kerr (back row, right). The local group continued to operate well into the 1980s before folding. (How many of you remember the chocolate-covered Easter eggs they would sell around this time of year?)
The national CGIT organization continued to be active until quite recently, surpassing 100 years of Christian ministry. They ceased to operate sometime in the last 10 years. A few chapters continued on, even without the Canada-wide group. It appears that Regina is home to the last remaining local chapter.
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By the early 1990s the church's youth activities had transitioned from being highly organized branches of larger entities into standalone groups. Even though they weren't as widely coordinated those groups still managed to connect with others through CBOQ Youth events and programs. The third photo shows some of the teens from First Baptist as they prepared to travel to Encounter in 2001.
Since the beginning of the first “Young People’s Society” in 1884 there have been countless youth groups at this church thanks to all the leaders who have given their time. Many of the youth who have passed through the programs stayed with the church and some even became prominent leaders within the congregation as adults. The positive impact of the youth groups over nearly 150 years has been enormous.
