Augustina is really a star turn among Rotary Youth Exchange students. Right from her first day with us in September, she has shown an astonishingly high level of relaxed confidence. Most weeks she steps up to the lectern and tells about her week as easily as if she’s chatting to a friend on the bus. We’ve had the best part of thirty exchange students over the years, almost all of them have been a credit to the programme, their family and their country. I find myself smiling as I listen to Augustina and at the end of today’s meeting I felt we’d heard from two really good speakers.
Past-Pres Catherine announced the line up of good folks who will take the helm of the club come July 1. They are: President Mike Molloy, Past-President Bryce Leggat, President-elect Janet Canavan, Secretary Nancy Brady, Treasurer Rob Sybersma, Directors: Sheila Welham, Barb Hislop, Owen McElhinney, Jim Brindle, Allan Ramsay and Rod Collard.
The club is actively working to sponsor a Syrian family. Laudable though it may be, the upshot of the federal government’s efforts to rescue 25,000 Syrians by the end of February, currently sees some 300 (I think I have that right) still cooling their heels in Hamilton hotel rooms. I don’t know about you, but I find that a hotel room wears thin after a night or two. Our ad-hoc committee plans to take one of those hotel-room families under its wing right away while continuing to work towards receiving and supporting another family to arrive later this year.
Gerry Willard gave us fair warning of a plan to do the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s work by cleaning up part of the Appleby Line/ QEW interchange some April Saturday morning, exact to be determined.
Speaking of April – On April 6th we are urged to support one of our Lakeside a-la Carte restaurants. Convene at Jackson’s Landing (Appleby/New) at 6.00.
Our guest speaker was Bonnie Sylvia who spoke about Camelot Centre, her enforced passion. I say enforced because I assume she would prefer that life had dealt a different hand for her family – particularly for her daughter Robin.
Robin was a normal child, the eldest of two daughters when, in 1988, at age three she contracted meningitis. The story of a little girl with a rising fever, a panicky run to the local hospital, a high-speed ambulance rush to a regional hospital, a six-day coma and twenty seizures a day was more than harrowing. Bonnie recounted it as only such a mother could, reflectively, emotionally and with throat-tightening pauses.
Robin eventually regained many of her functions but was left with irreparable right-side brain damage. The province provides some levels of support through the years of a child’s education, but it all comes to a grinding halt at age 21 when they graduate into a world without support.
It is up to parents to find some way to occupy their grown but disabled children. Camelot Centre was started by Bonnie and a supporting cast of similarly affected parents. As their brochure says, Camelot Centre is a creative program for adults with intellectual disabilities. It is open all year, Mondays to Fridays. There is a modest daily fee for service and it has a small, professional, creative and caring staff.
Twenty-seven years later, Robin is now 30 and she’s a regular at Camelot Centre.
Camelot Centre always needs to fundraise and Bonnie asked us to consider supporting their May 14th Spring Fling at Indian Wells. Tickets $30. You can read more about the Spring Fling and their September Golf Classic at www.camelotcentre.com
Bonnie is very active within the Burlington community where she is well known to many of us mostly as tireless and committed in her support of the Burlington Art Gallery. That plus Camelot Centre!
She said she works her butt off – I don’t doubt it but where she gets the energy is anyone’s guess.
P. Scribe
