Past President David Dean, president for the day.

 

 

An exceptionally beautiful day with the sun shining off the snow and the ice in the Hamilton Bay. We welcomed from the North Club Fareen Samji with her young guest David Vandenberg. Also from the North Club, Fred Sweeney.   David Tait, a friend and a guest of Andrew Gaydon. As usual we were glad to welcome Augustina and Camilla our exchange and outbound students.

 

Before the normal business of the day, Fareen told us of the upcoming Pythons' Pit which is in its fourth year, a Rotary club initiative that has been extremely popular and successful. It is an opportunity for youth to share business ideas and to get money for start-ups and ultimately to become entrepreneurs. It's divided into two groups, the high school group and the open division for residents of Halton. For the latter, the prize money is up to $20,000 and for the high school group there are three prizes of $2500 and $1500 and $1000. Sponsorship has been surprisingly easy, several major businesses having been very happy to contribute including RBC and MNP who readily gave $10,000 each, an easy ask because of the very clear benefit to business that this project promised. The Rotary clubs each contributed $500.

 

 

A integral and vital part of this programme is the mentorship and there are 21 non-Rotarians and 4 Rotarian mentors. A number of the non-Rotarians have learned about and have become very interested in joining Rotary. They have been there to help the young people to learn how to do an opening pitch. The impact has been transformative. The students described the event as gruelling, anxiety provoking but ultimately giving them a priceless experience, instilling in them vision, motivation and confidence. The mentor's have been impressed; the students' teachers too, have been impressed at the enrichment that their students have received. They noted an exponential growth in their learning.

 

Anyone wishing to see the previous televised events can see this on Video on Demand through Cogeco.

 

David Vandenberg stepped up to tell us of his experience, a past winner of the students' prize. He described the huge impact of Pythons' Pit and noted the Rotary roots and how much of Rotary went into its development. His plans are to address high schools to encourage students to develop their presentation skills before they leave, a very important lifetime asset. He developed an App for smart phones to help people with routine coffee runs! The App produces a receipt as well as storing individuals' preferences. They are working on monetizing the App through ads and even making a game from it. David has always wanted to be a leader and is clearly well on his way.

 

Augustina told us of her week and that she is preparing for the annual exchange students' Food Palooza that showcases the foods of their respective countries. She has worked with the Start 2 Finish Running and Reading programme and is anticipating yet another snow camping expedition in which they will have to take all of their food and necessities, somewhat harder than the last one.

 

Bruce Maybury spoke of the club's support of local restaurants who have contributed to Lakeside a la Carte and that the next one will be at Purple Heather on March 8th at 6 PM

 

Sergeant at arms, Ron Lambert castigated Alan Ramsey for putting as team leader this week, someone who had left the club years ago! Alan wanted to defend himself hoping that he might get legal representation from, Karmel Sakran and but even Karmel wasn't prepared to defend him! It was suggested that perhaps somebody should develop an app for the Rotary duty roster.

 

Catherine Brady is to become a grandmother to a boy in August. Glenn Warnica will be undergoing yet more gruelling travel research in Jamaica next week. Renée Papin was very happy to have met past member, Nancy Penny for lunch while travelling.

 

We are always glad to welcome members to give classification talks and this week Owen McElhinney was warmly welcomed to address the club. Owen started by explaining the difference between Mc vs. Mac and the origin of his name, a Gaelic name that, for the average mortal, would be considered unpronounceable; his explanation however did make very good sense. He was born in Dumbarton in  Scotland in a castle that had been converted into maternity home. His children later were delighted to think that their father had been born in a castle. He was raised in Clydebank, the second of nine children. From his kitchen window he was able to see the like of the QE2 being launched in this busiest of shipyards that so sadly has become all but extinct in the last few years. (One third of all the shipping in the world used to be built on the River Clyde!) 

 

 

He earned a civil engineering BSc in Strathclyde University where James Watt was the founder, the inventor of the first steam engine and also the inventor of the eponymous Watt, perhaps the most widely known unit in common use.

 

He spent five years in Nepal, a major highlight of his life where he went to develop a drinking water plant and met and married Nima a Sherpa who is from the foothills of Everest, and a staunch supporter of the Edmund Hilary Foundation. After they were married, he walked five days to meet his mother-in-law a gruelling walk through the foothills of the Himalayas and apparently never met her again after that. Their daughter Susan was born in Nepal.  She eventually became a dancer in the Canadian National Ballet, clearly a family tradition as Owen's sister used to dance for the Scottish National Ballet. Their daughter Diki was born in Glasgow.

 

Owen described an astonishing number of projects around the world at which he was site engineer including the Crown Plaza hotel and the Armadillo in Glasgow, 2 major landmarks in that city that was so wonderfully rebuilt into a cultural centre of Europe. He was also involved in building a power station for the Royal Navy in Loch Long in Scotland. 

 

In 1989 he came with his family to Canada to work on water treatment plants and subsequently, numerous sites in Ontario, many of them familiar to us. In 1995 he went for six months to India to work on a World Bank project, a hydroelectric power station in Himachal Pradesh. He spent five years in the United States working on four projects, a water treatment plant, a steel mill, the Detroit airport, and the San Diego Convention Centre. He worked at a distance on the P.E.I. Confederation Bridge working from New Brunswick. He spent three years working on the Chalk River nuclear reactor known as MAPLE, a strange acronym for Multipurpose Applied Physics Lattice Experiment, a good example of a rather desperate attempt to make a name out of an acronym rather than the other way round.

 

Recently he's been working on construction dispute resolution trying to make sense of construction claims relating to tenders that fell short of the mark, and breach of contract and bond and insurance claims. Common examples of problems with contracts are overpromising and misunderstanding and failure to read contracts. Contractors love to build things but they are often unaware of all of the pitfalls along the way. The use of the Critical Path Method Construction Schedule while essential, was very complex and produced more problems then could be managed by many.

 

Currently Owen is working on conflict resolution around a wind farm, a reactor, a condo development and a golf club.

 

What he didn't tell us, but we know it already, was that he is one of the kindest and most generous and most socially conscious individuals that we have pleasure of knowing and it was wonderful to hear his story and about his life and family.

 

After Rene Papin suitably thanked the speaker,  and David Dean was thanked for running a fine meeting, the meeting was adjourned.