Desjardins History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones

In 1897, Alphonse Desjardins, a French-Canadian journalist and federal parliamentary shorthand reporter, was deeply disturbed upon learning that a Montreal court had ordered a desperate borrower to pay an exorbitant interest rate exceeding 3,000% on a modest loan of $150. Recognizing that traditional commercial banks refused to serve working-class families and small agricultural producers, Desjardins spent three years researching European cooperative credit systems, including the German Raiffeisen and Schulze-Delitzsch movements and Italian popular banks. On December 6, 1900, Alphonse and his wife Dorimène gathered fellow citizens in Lévis, Quebec, to establish North America's first caisse populaire. The cooperative opened for business on January 23, 1901, in the Desjardins family home, with a humble initial deposit of 10 cents recorded in Dorimène's ledger, sparking a cooperative financial revolution across the continent.