At first the Canadian Co-operative Society was a success. In 1897 the co-operative counted 54 members, most living close to the mill. There they had built homes and barns and a boarding house. Aside from the sawmill and a logging operation, the members had set up a general store, a smithy, and a shoemaker's shop. They also ran a dairy and a vegetable farm. Not less than thirty students—mostly the members' children—attended the first school in Ruskin in the spring of 1897.