President Doug called the meeting to order at 5:45, (seconds after our feature speaker, Peter, made his appearance) and asked PDG Nancy to ring the bell to officially start the meeting. A strictly orchestral version of O Canada accompanied artists’ images representing areas of Canada on the screen. It was a National Film Board animation made for the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

President Doug’s thought for the week was as follows:
“Our top-rated, award-winning RI Foundation has spent more than $4 billion on life-changing, sustainable projects that help people in need around the world get clean water, medical care, literacy classes and other essentials”

ROTARY ANNOUNCEMENTS & REMINDERS

• President Doug was pleased to announce that members Paul and Glenn have agreed to take on the positions of club vice presidents. Since President Doug has agreed to extend his term to the 2021-22 Rotary year, Glenn will take over as club president for 2022-23 followed by Paul in the 2023-24 Rotary year. This was a result of recommendations made by the club’s Nominations Committee and the Board.

• The Rotary Club of Melfort has decided that the 2021 District conference to be held May 14 & 15 will be a strictly virtual conference due to the pandemic - not a hybrid of live & virtual as originally discussed.

• Details of the club’s Christmas dinner meeting taking place December 14th will be discussed at a Zoom meeting of the Board and Xmas dinner planning committee to be held on Tuesday, December 1^st.

• A recent email from the Ripple Effect program sought donations for Dec 1^st’s “Giving Tuesday”. Although the club makes an annual donation of $1500 to the Ripple Effect program, individual members can choose to add to that amount if they so wish.

• The club’s donation to Brenda Banbury’s “Walking 250 km in November” challenge – the sum donated by club members and a few dollars from the club President’s discretionary budget came to $190. PDG Ed informed the club that Brenda had indeed completed walking those 250 km in the past month and that there have been more donations added to the $190.

• The next District Governor’s meeting will take place on Thursday, December 3^rd at 7 PM CST. It will feature 3 speakers, but the first speaker, a doctor from the Saskatchewan Health Authority, will have a separate Zoom meeting earlier in the day on the topic of minimizing the spread of Covid-19 (emails will be sent out with details). The second speaker, Shannon Patton, from the Regina Office of the Canadian Mental Health Association, will speak about strategies to minimize mental health issues. The 3^rd speaker, His Worship Irvine Ferris, who is the mayor of Portage la Prairie, will talk about how communities have responded to the pandemic and how Rotary clubs can help.

• The next Zones 28 & 32 Director’s Dialogue meeting will take place on Thursday, January 14^th, 2021 at 6 PM CST. Speaker will be past RI president Barry Rassin, whose topic will be “Elevate Rotaract”. The emails with registration details for this Zoom meeting will be sent out in December. The last Director Dialogue had almost 500 Rotarians signed in.

Chuck Crocker provided a slide show that summarized his activities since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in Canada.

In February, the family went skiing (“undisturbed, lots of snow, a wonderful time”) in Fernie, BC – staying with Chuck’s brother-in-law. The Crocker family also spent some time in their cabin at Star Lake (in the Whiteshell, located between Westhawk and Falcon Lakes) in February.

In March their granddaughter Kinley started “remote learning” which included a class in the morning and then Pat & Chuck would go over to St James and go for a walk with Kinley in the afternoon (“quite enjoyable”). Pat started baking bread on Mondays, which delighted Chuck because “the house sure smells good!” The Crockers have had a milkman for 41 years but never met him because he would come and drop off a couple of jugs of milk at 4 AM. But now, with the Covid restrictions, the list of items ordered has gone beyond milk to include yogurt, eggs, cream, cheese, butter, sour cream, etc. Chuck isn’t sure how the milkman feels about providing these extras.

The family gathered for ‘pandemic dinners’ on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings, ordering food from local restaurants. Then the family started doing ‘game nights’ on Zoom as well.

In May, the family went fishing at Lake Manigotagan. In the fall, fishing was at The Narrows but much of that was kiboshed by the pandemic.

During the summer, work done on the cabin included putting in an air conditioner (“worth its weight in GOLD!”) and removing a wood-burning cook stove (to be converted to a puzzle table in the living room).

Chuck also got in a few golf games at the Falcon Lake golf course with his sister and her hubby when they came out to Manitoba from Alberta in July. Chuck was surprised (miffed, actually!) at how busy the golf course was this summer.

Chuck also had two tall (>70 feet) trees on his cottage property taken down by the tree guy (Richard Marshall) using a 65-foot tall boom.

During the summer Chuck was also doing a bit of work, selling some windows and doors for a company, which was enjoying a boom in sales – totally booked until February. A tip from Chuck – prices for windows and doors will be going up substantially in February/March due to supply issues, some of which are connected to the effects brought on to the industry by the pandemic.

President Doug informed us that according to the Random Number Generator he is using, next week’s Rotarian “Show and Tell” will be done by Darvin Jasper.