President Mandy Kwasnica was away this week. P.E. Martin Labossiere was the Chair for this meeting. Martin congratulated everyone in the club for putting on such a fantastic district conference on the weekend. All comments were positive about all aspects of the conference, even in those areas that were changed from years past. It was nice to be mixing with the exchange students during the event. Dave Morris was asked to lead the group into O Canada and Rotary Grace.
Sarge Mike Dudar introduced our guest Amanda Austin (helped gather data and put the Assiniboine Forest report together with Al Roberts).
Rotary Moments
Rod Delisle reported on the lobster dinner planning. The event date is now only 3 weeks away. Volunteers for the sale of bar tickets are required. A sign-up sheet was passed around. These will be ½ hour slots with 2 people in each time slot. Slots are from 5:00pm until 8:00pm. After that, we can usually pass it along to the bar tenders. Volunteers were also asked to sign-up for lobster cracking. Last day for ticket sales will be May 27th. The lobster order will go in to the supplier at that date.
Nancy Morris asked for everyone to keep on bringing in the prizes for the auctions. They would strongly request that the prizes be brought in at least 5 to 6 days prior to the event night.
Jack Wilson advised that the lunch and tour at Urban Stables will be on May 16th, 2019. The cost will be $10 for lunch. Please be there by 12:00 noon for lunch (meat or vegetable lasagne), the tour will end at 2:00pm. The location is Camp Assiniboia at 2220 Lido Plage Road, Cartier MB.
Lloyd Talbot received a small package from Chicago recently. He gets quite excited about the contents of these packages from Rotary in Chicago, this one was for Dave Morris. Dave is now a five-time Paul Harris Fellow.
There was ~ $1320 collected from the conference silent auction for Polio Plus.
Jack Wilson also reported on the funds collected for S.T.A.R.S. at the conference. Cash collected was $2280. They will be making a presentation to the club in June. The facilities will be going through an expansion to accommodate the increasing demands being put on the local site. S.T.A.R.S. Manitoba had 76 calls last month and 5 calls this past Saturday.
Al Roberts re-introduced Amanda Austin and thanked her for all the work she has done to make the Assiniboine Forest Survey a success. There will be $25,000 coming shortly from the government to compensate for all the work that has been done by almost all the club members. There were 650 volunteer man hours put into this survey by club members. Amanda did a great job for us.
Paul Brault reminded all about the Westgrove Learning Centre’s 2nd Gala Dinner taking place on June 19th, 2019. The dinner will take place at Breezy Bend Golf Club with Terry MacLeod (CBC) being the guest speaker. A major prize, through separate ticket sales, will be two tickets to anywhere that WestJet flies. Please consider sponsoring the ticket for a student to attend.
Paul also advised that they are making Wednesdays ‘Special Event Days’ at the Westgrove Learning Centre. The West Winnipeg YMCA has offered low entrance rates for those on social assistance.
D.G. Elaine Thompson read an email from Brenda Banbury (Saskatoon North) as well as an email from John Blount (Conference Speaker). Both were filled with very positive comments regarding the conference and how much they enjoyed being there.
