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On Oct. 24, 1938, deep in the heart of mining country in Northern Ontario, a group of women met to discuss the book Origins of Peoples of Czecho-Slovakia , by G. Brooker.

They probably gathered in one of the small wooden homes built for workers and their families by the mining companies; they were undoubtedly at the start of another harsh winter in the bush. Books and each other's company were a civilizing comfort for these young mothers, teachers and nurses, isolated as they were from the larger towns in the area.

The 16 members had paid their annual 50-cent dues at their opening meeting, Oct. 3. They met twice in November and twice every month after that to the end of May; their modus operandi was for each one of them to buy, read and present a book to the others, and then make it available for them to read.

The December meetings were dedicated to 10-minute talks on Canadian authors such as Mazo de la Roche, Robert E. Knowles and Robert Service. In January, a “Mr. Love” came and schooled the women on interior decorating.

The following year the group held discussions around “word frequently mispronounced, or new words,” “modern poetry as written by club members” and “any interesting fact connected with English kings other than the House of Windsor.”

This slice of history comes thanks to the fastidious minutes the women kept of their meetings, and the fact those minutes have been handed down to the current membership of what is now called the Timmins Book Club.

“They were very organized,” says Evelyn Rymer, 88, the club's historian and keeper of the archives. “They had a constitution, minutes and meetings, all held in a very business-like way.”

Rymer, who joined in the 1980s after retiring from teaching, has been reading the minutes and getting a feel for the history of the club. She's seen how it transformed during the Second World War, when the members cut back their meetings to once a month because they had jobs in the Red Cross and other war-related work.

And then, in the 1960s and ‘70s, their husbands began to retire and they moved south, leaving behind the friends they'd spent a lifetime with around books, taking with them the $2 silver spoons they gave to each other to celebrate the birth of their children, and which were paid for out of their dues.

The club has continued to evolve since then, but is still a women-only affair. Instead of busy mothers, its nine current members are mostly retired nurses and teachers; the only member still working is the club secretary, Doreen Yakubuski, an English teacher and librarian at the local high school.

What remains today, along with the friendships built around books, is a dedication to the sense of order that the club's founders brought to it.

“We follow a standard procedure for most of our meetings,” Yakubuski says. “After a reading of the previous minutes and a reading of minutes from our archives, we begin with ‘tidbits' where members share news of a literary nature.

“Our meetings continue to be social gatherings, not just literary discussions,” she adds. “We share other interests such as art, music, films and travel, so conversations do go off on non-literary tangents as well. Politics, religion and sex are not taboo topics.”

But if anything has ensured the survival of club for so long, it's the fact the members “very much enjoy sharing what we read. Reading for us is not just a solitary pastime.”

Just as it wasn't 70 years ago.