After the Land Acknowledgement Statement and the singing of O Canada, Acting President Glenn proceeded to share a Rotary Moment - Glenn was impressed with the first Zoom session of the District Conference that took place on Thursday, May 5th. There were about 100 people online and the topic dealt with child poverty with Noelle DePape as emcee. Speakers included football players Andre Green and Troy Westwood, who are involved in youth programs. The next session will take place on Thursday, May 12th at 7:00 PM with Past President Mandy as emcee, dealing with the topic of saving the environment for our youth.

ROTARY MOMENTS

The “Talking Rotary” Podcast is published in Apple, Google and Spotify Podcasts. There is also a “Talking Rotary” website which lists archived podcasts (https://talkingrotary.org/media/). The newest episode features our member Nancy Hansen.

There will be a meeting of the Lobster Dinner committee immediately following the club meeting. The deadline for selling tickets is June 7th.

Jack has made a call for volunteers to assist city staff in planting about 400 small tree seedlings on Wednesday morning between 10 AM and 12 noon at Tom Chester Park, on the west side of William Clement Parkway, near the pond. The project is coordinated by Cam Ruml, City of Winnipeg, Naturalist Services. Jack will have a few Rotary vests or you can wear your own Rotary gear. Park on Oakdale.

Rotary International has congratulated Nancy Morris for having been made a member of the Polio Plus Society (due to her generous annual contributions to Polio Plus).

Rotary District 5550 has congratulated Nancy Hansen for our club being the recipient of the District’s Literacy Award for 2021 and 2022 in recognition of our club’s contributions to literacy both locally and internationally. Nancy has also recently reached out to IRCOM (Immigrant and Refugee Committee Organization of Manitoba) about their needs and IRCOM provided a wish list that included scribblers, pencils, Oxford picture dictionaries, a giant digital clock and enough planting supplies for 14 students. Nancy is currently collecting these items.

RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) has cancelled its online version, but the original, in-person RYLA will be taking place again this summer at the Anglican Memorial Camp, Clear Lake, MB campsite. They are seeking a delegation of Rotarians to help clean up the campsite at Clear Lake (which has hosted RYLA for over 10 years) on May 21st. Registration for RYLA camp remains open until June 30th. Junior RYLA (ages 12-14) takes place August 1-6, 2022 while Senior RYLA (ages 15-17) takes place August 8-13, 2022.

Ukraine Project: Mandy reported that ‘D’ and his family have submitted their applications to come to Canada and await word from immigration as to where their applications are. ‘D’ and family are likely going to need housing (like at an Air B and B) in Warsaw (where they finish off the biometrics before they come to Canada) after May 16th.

Acting President Glenn reported that 45 of the leftover white Ukraine fundraiser T-shirts that Ed Towes had volunteered to take care of selling last week have been sold – plus he has obtained more donations as well. He has about 10 left.

Chase the Ace – Muriel Sutherland won the weekly draw for $14 last Thursday. She turned the Ace of diamonds, so the Ace of spades is still waiting to be turned.

PDG Jim introduced tonight’s speaker who appeared on Zoom. Joel Templeman has had careers in the military, in education and in IT. He is currently a Youth Education Consultant for the Cyberwave program with the Manitoba Institute for Trades and Technology where he is focusing on professional development careers in Cybersecurity. Tonight he'll talk about a project happening in the North End under the auspices of the Internet Society, a volunteer organization he brought to Manitoba.

Joel spoke about the Internet Society International (formed in 1992 - a global non-profit organization empowering people to keep the internet a force for good) and about the Internet Society Manitoba Chapter (formed in November 2021), which carries out the same mission and vision with a focus on the Manitoba area, upholding the principle of universal access to the internet for the benefit of all individuals in rural, remote, indigenous and low-income communities in Manitoba. There is also a Canada chapter (located in Ottawa and dealing with policy) and a Quebec chapter.

There are two main functions – getting a high-speed access to the internet (technical - having additional devices and learning how to use them) and strengthening the encryption to keep communications secure for things like banking. The ideal situation, according to CRTC, is for 90% of Canadian homes and businesses to have access to broadband speeds of at least 50 megabytes per second for downloading information and 10 mbps for uploads. As of 2021, the figure was 76.2% of Canadians have that luxury. It is still a work in progress, including Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink. Most of the movement of internet data uses submarine cable and recently, using Low Earth Orbit satellites (LEOs).

During the COVID pandemic, students in North End Winnipeg were required to work online through the internet and this required the financial input from social groups in the North End, including Indigenous Vision (consisting of 11 community organizations in the North End), Manitoba Research Alliance, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the U of Winnipeg’s Institute of Urban Studies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council as well as Computers for Schools Manitoba (which will provide reconditioned computers to community members for free). A sustainable model for providing North End Winnipeg with internet is needed for the system to be operational for ten years or more. That is being slowly worked on. To get involved, it’s required to join the Internet Society International (https://internetsociety.org/) first – it’s free to join – and then to join the Internet Society Manitoba Chapter at this link (also free) (https://www.internetsocietymanitoba.ca/join/).

Acting President Glenn thanked Joel for his presentation.

Sarge Lyle welcomed our guest Anna Kwasnica. Then he invited members to share their Happy Bucks.

PDG Nancy was delighted to report that her 20 year old twin grandsons who are playing in the North American Hockey League won their first game, lost their second game, then won their third game after one and a half periods of overtime, with the result that they move up to the next level.

PDG Jim was happy about being able to go down to Grand Forks for a couple of days last week and then on Sunday (Mothers Day) he enjoyed a day at Patricia Beach with Lorraine, their daughter and son-in-law.

PDG Ed had bought a 50-50 ticket but just had a twoonie. Since the Sarge didn’t have change, Ed suggested that he would throw in a Happy Buck – and if he didn’t, he would be fined anyway! (So even though he wasn’t really “happy”, at least he wouldn’t be fined.)

Jagdish had a Happy Buck for welcoming the rain after he had raked his front and back lawns.

Chuck was pleased that his cabin at the lake in the Whiteshell was high and dry, but the two main docks have floated away and some infrastructure will have to be repaired once the water level goes down.

Mandy was happy because she just celebrated her first – and best possible Mothers Day ever with beautiful weather, enjoyed a lovely breakfast and the kids had a great day.

Anna had a happy buck for having “this great family and it’s good to be in a new place!” (which drew an applause from all the members).

50-50 DRAW

As our sole guest, Anna was asked to draw the “lucky” 50-50 ticket. The ticket number drawn was identical to Anna’s ticket number. Sarge Lyle explained the procedure and showed her the approximately 5 marbles remaining, then put them back into the cloth bag and had her try to draw the lucky blue marble. Unfortunately, the marble she withdrew from the bag was a white one. So there was no 50-50 winner again today.