Glenn Warnica was our Acting president today in the absence of David Roscoe who is travelling across Europe.

 

Wow – our meeting today started off with Abraham talking to us via SKYPE which had been arranged for us by Sheila Welham. Abraham reported that he had passed his first cycle in University – I assume that is a quarter year.  He also reported that he took a trip back to his island to visit his parents.  He is going to start his second cycle in about a week.  He met with Sean Tomkins 2 days before and he wants to see us again sometime in the future. The SKYPE was left on and there was a brief discussion with Abraham at the end of the meeting.

 

Guests – Jackie Murray, Rotary Club of Burlington Lakeshore; Robin Bailey, Burlington Food Bank and John Lawrence Reynolds who is our speaker today.

 

Susan Casper spoke about The Telling Tales Festival which will be held with the main event being on Sunday September 15^th at Westfield Heritage Village in Rockton. Another event – Celebrating Graphic Novels will be held at Hamilton Public Library on September 21^st and a third event will be held at the RBG on the 22^nd entitled Nature Tales. She mentioned that volunteer help is needed and that we can sign up for the various volunteer jobs on the Telling Tales website.

 

 

Joe Watson and Jamie Edwards donated golf  and dinner for 2 along with a bottle of great wine from Joe Watson’s wine cellar.  This was auctioned off with Bob Martin and Glenn Warnica going in with a joint bid – I think of $350 – great deal.

 

Nancy Penney reported that she needs any unsold Raffle Tickets back by the next meeting so she can reconcile them before the Lakeside event.

 

It was reported that 37 Rotary Clubs are on board supporting the sales of the Rotary Local Lager Beer that was introduced to us at our last meeting. Many are using the Gift Packs as a fundraising vehicle.  These Gift Packs are composed of 4 cans of beer and 2 glasses in a cardboard 6-pack beer container and retail around $20.

 

Andrew Gaydon explained that instead of providing a shirt or blanket as a gift when registering at the golf tournament, the decision was made last year and again this year to give everyone a gift card which could be used at Fortinos. Everyone was given the opportunity to give the card back in the form of a donation to the food bank.  $3500 was raised and these funds were given to Robin Bailey, General Manager of the Burlington Food Bank. Robin gave a brief report saying that the need was up 30% this year. He mentioned that 40% of the food went to children – mainly single parents or sometimes larger families or families who had unexpected financial difficulties – who didn’t have the income to support all the expenses they had.

 

Keith Williams introduced John Lawrence Reynolds who is a Canadian author. He has published more than 30 fiction and non-fiction books. Two of his novels won the Arthur Ellis Award—The Man Who Murdered God and Gypsy Sins. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, he has lived in Burlington for several years. He is a graduate of McMaster University.

 

 

John started off by explaining that story tellers have always been part of all cultures. John stated that he started off writing mystery novels as that was the type of book he read and so it was easy for him to follow that lead. He moved from fiction to true crime reporting books.  He became interested in Investing and so did a book on that subject.  He did one about people in secret societies and on health systems (Prognosis)

 

He then did an autobiography but discovered he could make a lot more money doing autobiographies as a ghostwriter so this has become his latest writing fashion. He also explained that many famous people don’t have the time or competency to write their own story. He has been the ghostwriter for just some of the following people: Brian Tobin; Robert Milton, CEO of Air Canada; Frank O’Dea, Founder of Second Cup; Buzz Hargrove; Rick George of Suncor; Robert Herjavec on Shark Tank and Justin Trudeau.

Rather than me going through all Robert’s books, below are a couple of links for you to go to. Unfortunately, Robert’s talk was curtailed before he finished and he was thanked by Bob Martin and given the Certificate for 120 doses of polio vaccine in regards to Polio Plus.

 

Sergeant at Arms    There were fines and happy dollars but the main announcement was that Eric Anderson won The Open golf guessing game that the rest of us contributed to.

 

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Footnote: this is something that has bothered me for the days since the meeting.  We had a GREAT SPEAKER this morning and if I had been the speaker I would have been insulted. I thought we were being rude! While the speaker may have gone over his allotted time, the issue is the program order.  I am not sure why the speaker has been moved up in the order line-up but in any Rotary Club I have gone to and other organizations /events, the speaker is always the last item on the agenda.  We have to go back to this!! In this case the President of the day could have been in a position to say that we have to wrap up the formal meeting but if anyone wishes to stay or ask questions they are free to do so. That is simply not possible when the speaker is midway in the agenda.