Our History
How Our Special Sisterhood Came To Be
In early January 2011, Allison Murney-Jones and Miranda Fowler. decided that a new and different organization needed to be created in Niagara and shortly after e-mailed the Alpha Chapter of Alpha Pi Phi located at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario [with the suggestion of Brittany Martin (KZΨ)]. An enthusiastic response was received from Rebecca Reeds, their president at the time, on January 11th. The day after, two more founding sisters joined, Kerri Warren and Stephanie Galati. On the weekend of January 21st-23rd, 2011, Miranda, Stephanie and Allison visited Alpha Chapter (a requirement of Alpha Pi Phi) to colonize was to have five founding sisters. Shortly after on January 24th, Jenna Easton joined rounding off the five founding sisters of Alpha Pi Phi in Niagara.
The five founding sisters of Beta Chapter believed that Alpha Pi Phi embodied everything we stand for and loved everything about Alpha Chapter and their sisters. Alpha Chapter was founded on February 26th, 2009 by our six amazing Founding Mothers: Paz Arias, Lauren Crosby, Jessica Doyle, Heather McBride, Lesley Walker and Laura Kell.
January 25th, 2011 was when the five founding sisters of Alpha Pi Phi in Niagara received our official letter to become Alpha Pi Phi Beta Colony. During their colonization period, the founders all worked extremely hard to complete the tasks given to them by Alpha Chapter so that on March 6th, 2011 we could be initiated and officially become Alpha Pi Phi Beta Chapter.
In the beginning it was decided that Allison Murney-Jones would be President and New Member Support Officer, Miranda F. would be Vice-President and Treasurer, Kerri Warren would be External Programming Officer, Stephanie Galati would be Membership Development Officer and Jenna Easton would be Secretary. Our founding sister family sweater colours are as follows; Allison Murney-Jones- red with white letters and black outline, Miranda F.- grey with pink letters and white outline, Stephanie Galati- brown with blue letters, Kerri Warren- blue with white letters and black outline and Jenna Easton- Purple with purple letters and white outline. All of the founding sisters were numbered as B-000.
Going into their first academic year as a chapter, positions were changed so that going into the year Miranda was President, New Member Support Officer and Treasurer, Stephanie was Vice-President and Membership Development Officer, Kerri was Secretary and Jenna was External Programming Officer. Through many trials and tribulations, with the support of each other and our sisters from Alpha Chapter, we had a very successful first year and reached 25 total members. At this time, we have over 200 sisters in our chapter! We are excited to continue this growth and to welcome many new swans into our sisterhood in the years to come!