The Anglican Church Women’s diocesan headquarters in Vancouver

Onto the pile go several pairs of modestly-used blue jeans, a brand new pair of women's black shorts, price tag still attached, a brilliant blue men's sweater, and a pretty pink blouse.

Set aside for mending is a black windbreaker with a small tear. A slightly stained pale blue sweater doesn't make the cut, either. Then Catherine Bicknell and Carreen Adams, with a couple of helpers, wrap the load in a quilt and wrestle it into final submission with reinforced plastic and duct tape.

Another bale from the Anglican Church Women of the diocese is now ready for an isolated Yukon parish, this one going to St. Saviour's, Carcross, pop. 430.

That's the scene every Monday morning September to June at the Anglican Memorial House on

W. 14th Ave.
in Vancouver which independent-minded, forward-thinking church women bought in 1950. Today, the 1912 building is assessed at a tidy $1.082 million. Thanks also to bequests that bring term deposits to more than $70,000 and to prudent management, the ACW is in fine financial shape.

But there are Monday mornings when Bicknell and Adams, both from St. Thomas, Vancouver, are the only people at the house to carry on the reuse and recycle work, dating back to 1921, that gives the building its charitable status, thus exempting it from property taxes.

With 43 branches around the diocese, the drive into Vancouver on a Monday can be prohibitively long. And the last two decades of immigration have changed the face of Vancouver itself.

But, calculated from membership fees, the aging ACW membership in the diocese sits at about 600, down almost eight per cent from just five years ago.

Paulette Smith of St Helen's, Surrey has no problem understanding the trend.

At 61, she's at the tail end of the generations of women who stayed home.

For her, as a young mother, the ACW gave her someplace to go, something to do and a chance to dress up.

Members of the Anglican Church Women with their honourary patron, Mrs. Gwen Ingham (centre), at the annual ACW meeting

Her 38-year-old daughter, at her job all day, "doesn't have the time to give the hours I've given," she says. But Smith has also seen the ACW change steadily from the 1950s and 60s when, as a girl, she embroidered quilt squares for Anglican missionaries to take to Africa. That gives her confidence for the future.

"Now we're into the reality mode," Smith says. "We're not the uptight ladies with the white gloves and the hats. We have a little more nitty gritty to us."

Diocesan president Judy Bueschkens, also national secretary, spends plenty of time at national meetings talking about the future.

New ideas come up or old ones get a 21st century twist. The ACW knitting tradition has been shaped by one church into producing shawls for cancer patients. However, "there's nothing on a big grand scale," says Bueschkens. "The ACW tends to be a very locally-driven organization."

But, in one form or another, the ACW will continue, she believes, because the work it does will always need to be done. "We look after little things and we look after people one at a time."

Today, St. Helen's ACW tends to its own backyard, among other things giving financial support to two monthly programs at the Surrey food bank and layettes to Surrey Memorial Hospital for mothers who have little else.

The famous ACW baking goes on, as the group hosts funeral teas for its parish. But Smith suggests more could be made of the spiritual support and friendship the women give each other. "We're not just a bunch of old workhorses," she says.

"My biggest hope," she adds, "is that somebody young has enough vision to start something that allows the ACW to continue."

Bicknell, at 64, with 11 years of ACW work behind her, including her current post as Social Action chair, also has no problem understanding the time squeeze on younger women. But, faced with work to be done on a Monday morning, it's her contemporaries who bewilder her.

"I know some people who are my age and they're involved in nothing," she says, tartly . "It really depresses me. They're acting like they're 35 years older than they are."