The surprising Saskatchewan origin of Girl Guide cookies

Nine-year-old Hila Smart from Saskatoon knows the routine well.

This year, she was in Embers and is moving up to Guides. She earned two special badges for selling the most cookies in her group in the spring campaign and the most overall.

Smart said she sells mint chocolate cookies in the fall, and chocolate and vanilla cookies in the spring. (Image Credit: Brittany Caffet/CKOM)

She said at first, going door-to-door felt scary.

“I wouldn’t even go up to some houses first,” Smart said. “But then I went to every single one.”

Now, she can sell a whole case in about 15 minutes.

“You walk up to the door, say hi, ask them if they want to buy some,” she explained. “They say ‘Yes, no, let me see if I have money,’ that sort of stuff.”

For Smart, the cookies are only part of what Girl Guides is about.

“You learn how to be friends, and you make stuff, you do crafts, you go on field trips, sleepovers,” she said, remembering a recent overnight trip to the Regina Science Centre.

It’s a tradition so deeply woven into Canadian life that many people assume Girl Guide cookies have always just… existed.

But according to former North Central Community Association executive director Rob Deglau, the story actually begins in Regina.

Deglau discovered the connection while working on a community history project focused on Regina’s North Central neighbourhood.

“Because the inner city gets a bad rap all the time, we decided, ‘Well, let’s do a history project,’” he said. “And let’s find everything and anything that the neighbourhood was about, and who was a part of it, and what came out of it.”

Then came one especially unexpected discovery.

“We found just a plain house that had an incredible history around the Girl Guides,” he said. “We found out that the Girl Guide cookies were invented or started in North Central.”

The story led back to a woman named Christina Riepsamen.

Born in Amsterdam, Riepsamen arrived in Regina in 1915 with her husband Johan and daughter Hendrica, known as Henny. The family lived in the 1300 block of Retallack Street.

Riepsamen, who served as a Girl Guide captain for 21 years, believed deeply in the organization.

In 1927, Henny wanted to attend summer camp at Last Mountain Lake with her Girl Guide company, but the girls needed money for food and travel.

So Riepsamen got baking.

“She decided to do some fundraising for her daughter so she could attend summer camp,” Deglau explained.

She baked cookies, packed them one dozen to a bag and sent Henny and the girls of Newlands Own Girl Guide Company #4 out to sell them to neighbours, friends and family for 10 cents a bag.

That simple fundraiser became the beginning of a Canadian institution. By 1929, Girl Guide cookie sales had spread nationally and became an annual fundraiser across Canada.

Riepsamen’s Girl Guide cookies were first sold in Regina in 1927. By 1929, Girl Guide groups around Canada were using the strategy to fundraise.

Back in 1927 the cookies sold for 10 cents a dozen, about $1.82 today.

Now, Girl Guide cookies sell for $6 a box, helping girls across Canada pay for camps, trips and activities, just like Henny’s group did nearly a century ago.

And while the flavours have changed over the years, the spirit behind them remains the same.

Girls learning confidence. Girls learning leadership. Girls discovering they can knock on doors they once felt too nervous to approach.

For Smart, that confidence didn’t come overnight. But somewhere between the first nervous knock and her 168th box sold, it started to grow.

Nearly 100 years after a Regina mother baked cookies so girls could go camping, Canadian kids are still pulling wagons through neighbourhoods, still learning courage and still asking one simple question at the door:

“Hi, would you like to buy some Girl Guide cookies?”

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by Brittany Caffet/CKOM

The surprising Saskatchewan origin of Girl Guide cookies

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