The single project of the Ponoka Community Rest Room Association, this community restroom remained open from its construction in 1929 until 1992. Its primary purpose was to provide facilities for farm women while in town, providing restroom and changing room facilities, even a warm place to socialize. The building also housed a small library, the genesis of the Ponoka Public Library, and a telephone. The IODE even held meetings in the building for a time.
The building is a flat-roofed rectangular two-story masonry structure constructed from cement blocks that resemble cut stone. Its atypical commercial style design features a principal façade with three store front type windows at street level, each flanked by a doorway, while the upper story has four residential scale windows. Today it is home to retail spaces, possibly with apartments above, as was the case in earlier years.
Ponoka Community Rest Room
The heritage value of Ponoka Community Rest Room, built in 1929 by the Ponoka Community Rest Room Association registered in 1925 under the Societies Act of 1924, lies in its provision of a social service for farm women travelling in from country districts with small children who needed washroom facilities and somewhere warm to rest, feed babies, use the telephone, and wait while their husbands conducted farm business, or to use as a base from which to shop. As a replacement for an earlier restroom in a small wood frame building established on the same lot in 1920, its construction illustrated the importance of its function and highlights the Association's strategies of organization and entrepreneurship through fundraising to accomplish their goals. Its longevity of operation demonstrated the consistent need to provide a venue with a social comfort level for country women in an agricultural service centre such as Ponoka.
The Ponoka Community Rest Room also has a significant connection with the Ponoka Stampede, first held in 1920 with the explicit purpose of raising funds for the first rest room. The continuing wide support of the town's businessmen for the project was symbolized by Walter Gee, garage owner, who allowed the Association to use the stepped east wall of his premises, with an almost identical façade on the lot immediately west, as a party wall. Gee donated the proceeds from a dance to mark the opening of his garage to the Association for their building fund. When contractors Jas. Caine and R. A Sorensen completed the building for $4,832, it opened on November 30, 1929, with a formal tea. The Ponoka Community Rest Room signified the cooperation between town and country until it closed in 1992.
The Ponoka Community Restroom is valued for its relationship to generations of farm women in the Ponoka area, marked by a long roll call of local women who served as President or Directors of each district group that contributed to the Association. It is also significant for its association with a number of local women's organizations of the early 20th century, including the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire (IODE) who used the premises for their meetings for a period of time and managed its small library that eventually formed the basis of the collection in the Ponoka Jubilee Public Library constructed in 1956. The upper floor Ponoka Community Restroom was divided into suites to meet a pressing demand for accommodation for women, and professionals including doctors had offices on the east side of the ground floor through the decades.
From the Ponoka Heritage Inventory