39th Anniversary of the Club Charter
Did You Know? As the Historian for Life (or so it appears), I have been asked to produce a little ditty about what we were doing to form this club, 40 years ago, 1976.
That’s right, our 40th anniversary of getting our official charter, from Rotary International will be March 14th 2017, but 40 years ago in 1976, we were a group of men gathered to begin the process of forming Calgary’s next Rotary club. There were well established clubs already throughout our growing city, but the Calgary club (downtown) and South club were called on by the District Governor to get a new one going in the southwest. In those days, clubs were actually assigned a physical boundary from which to draw members. We were focused on the much smaller Chinook Shopping Centre, as a likely source of membership, hence the name, THE ROTARY CLUB of CALGARY CHINOOK was born.
Our birth began in the late summer of 1976. All prospective candidates for membership were sponsored by individual members of either the Downtown or South clubs, selected on the basis of ‘classification’, very strictly followed to assure no duplicates. Initially weekly meetings were arranged at the Eagles Hall, about where Shanks is located now. South club member Greg McLellan, classification Religion/Catholic, was chosen to be the charter president and spearhead the formation leading to charter.
A number of candidates did evolve from sponsorships and referrals, some tested the waters and chose not to join, but a much larger contingency did evolve to eventually lead us to full charter by RI. The big 4 mentors assisting us a long the way were Jim Porter, of the South club, and Ward Tennant, George Robbins and Curly Galbraith of the Downtown club. Father Greg, with his sharp wit, referred to them as “all Ancient Rotarians” in a Bulletin of November 23, 1976.
Our very fist ‘Bulletin’ was dated November 16 1976, in which Father Greg was suggesting possible names for future issues, like Shoelast, Shoestring and Shorts ... never really understood why those names were bantered about. By the way, the ‘Bulletin’ became the “Arch” as it is known now, on April 25th 1979, as suggested by this scribe.
The charter group were testing various possible locales for a permanent meeting place, as the Eagles Hall setup was not really conducive to our meeting style. Ultimately, we chose the Tradewinds Hotel, across Macleod Trail from Chinook Centre, with a little prodding from a charter member, Larry Ryder, classification ‘Hotel Management’, at the Tradewinds.
We continued to meet, unchartered, weekly into the new year, getting more and more anxious to receive our charter. The 72nd anniversary for RI was February 23, 1977 ... that was a date Father Greg had hoped for our charter, a double celebration, alas not to be had. In our 19th ‘Bulletin’ we were advised RI had approved our Charter on March 14th 1977. A celebration of the club’s charter, organized by our two sponsor clubs, would be held about a month later. Today, there are still 5 charter members of the club, providing “service above self”. They have all served in numerous committees and fund raising functions, and as club Presidents: Dr Ian Burgess, Herb Imler, Ron Smith, Tom Sorenson and Jim Thompson.
In a future “Did You Know”column we’ll review the April 12th 1977 celebration of charter night and the interesting members we have known over these 40 years. For example, do you know which member was an MLA, which was a former CFL football player and who was our first female member ???