It was a pleasure to welcome a number of guests to the meeting of the Rotary Club of Burlington Central on Thursday February 5th 2015. Regrettably, your scribe was also the guest speaker and his mind was elsewhere during the introductions so it is hoped that he might be forgiven for mentioning only two of them.  Chris Byrnes was visiting from the North Club.  He told the scribe that he had heard that there was to be an excellent speaker to day and that he had come down especially, whereas  actually, he came to talk about something about which more later.  Your scribe will doubtless get over the disappointment in time.  We also welcomed once again Lee Ford-Jones who actually had come to give the scribe moral support!  Our other guests were equally welcomed; it is always a pleasure to have guests, and among them I know that there are some prospective members.

 

The meeting went according to order and without a hitch.  The slate of new directors was presented to us by President Catherine Brady:

Pres. Bryce Leggatt

Pres. Elect  Mike Molloy

Past Pres..Catherine Brady

Treasurer  Rob Sybersma

Community Service - Rene Papin

Secretary - Nancy Brady

Club Administration-Allan Ramsay

Director of Fundraising-  Ron Lambert

Communications - Jim Brindle

Youth- Ryan Thomson with Sheila Welham

Membership  Andrew Gaydon

International- Owen McElhinney

 

Announcements:

March 23-23 2015 there will be a presidential visit 7080 at a Banquet in Guelph.

 

Chris Byrnes asked us to consider writing to the CRTC, preferably from the heart, to tell them of the value of having a radio station in Burlington.  As you may see from his domain name, Byrnesmedia.com, Chris is an expert in this field having owned, managed and consulted on local radio stations since before his immigration from New Zealand.There is little doubt that Burlington is distinct from Hamilton but in Ottawa they don't realize that.  It would be wonderful if an articulate group like ours were to put pen to paper and briefly summarize the reasons we are distinct and why we should have our own station.  Currently we have none and Hamilton has…7!  Selfishly, I think our club(s) would stand to benefit by more focused advertising of our events.  Do take a moment to go to the website, here is a cutting from his letter:

Please go to this CRTC website and be as specific as possible as to why you feel it is important that Burlington needs its own FM radio station. You can do so by clicking on this link below

 

 

Note: when you get to this site be sure to change the first button from “comment” to “support”.  Insert your comments in the “comments box”

 

Chris Byrnes' email is Chris@byrnesmedia.com

 

Kathy Thomas was inducted as a Paul Harris Fellow.

 

The winners of the "Football Pool" were Roy Cooper, Bryce Leggatt, a member from the North Club who won a sizeable prize, $250, and finally the Sergeant at Arms.

 

Mention was made and reminders given about the upcoming Beer Festival, "Meet the Model" Vogue models.  Kathy Thomas reminds us about Lakeside a la Carte on August 9th, a mere 6 months away; let it remain always front of mind.

 

Lawrence Leung was very proud to announce the upcoming event when no less than the RI president will be visiting Burlington and having lunch at the Burlington Art Gallery on March 24th.  This Tuesday meeting will replace our Thursday 26th meeting NB !

 

After a very kind introduction that was so well appreciated by the speaker, Andrew Gaydon introduced

Anthony Ford-Jones. The club then warmly welcomed the speaker on the subject of Paediatrics over a 4 decade career.

 

I am going to keep this synopsis very brief as I am happy to send an attached file of the speakers notes with the associated slides for anyone who would like to look a little deeper into the talk. 

 

In a nutshell, I wanted to talk, not about all the wonderful achievements in the field of children's health care over 40 years and there have been many, but about what I have seen changing at the front lines since I started here in Burlington 35 years ago. 

 

I couldn't fail to mention however, the huge strides that have been made in the area of vaccines and the great number of children saved from death and debilitating diseases that were all too prevalent at the start of my career.  We are watching the unfolding of the current measles epidemic, a real scourge. Too many young, well educated parents cannot get their minds around its potential impact on them and the children who will suffer because of their refusal to vaccinate their children.  They are too far removed from the sheer terror that these diseases cause parents only 2 generations agl. They truly believe that medical science is not capable of determining what is good for their children and it is their God-given right to make those decisions even if objectively not in the best interest of their child.  They are so ready to trust "research" done on Google, forgetting that reading dubious websites is NOT research, and is certainly not demonstrating wisdom or benefitting from decades of rather nasty experience.

 

The main drift of my talk was about the very poor state of mental health in children, yes, even in Burlington.  Mental and physical health can be measured by the science of Social Paediatrics and the Social Determinants of Health are strongly linked to the way people are paid, or more properly, how badly they are paid.  It was impossible to talk about that without identifying the major cause for the problems: the imbalance of income distribution.  The worse that disparity is, the greater the problems within our children and youth.  This has been so well demonstrated in a wonderful book, The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett.  It is a very well written and scrupulously researched book for the lay person on the economics of our societies.

 

It is particularly sad to see just how close to home the mental health problems have come with many episodes of attempted suicide every year, and the huge consumption of costly psychopharmaceuticals in this, our supposedly high income/low poverty Burlington.  The sooner we recognize these problems as well educated, articulate and well positioned influential people such as make up our Rotary Clubs, the sooner we will make sure that the conversation that might lead to a levelling of the income disparity gets taken to the levels where such decisions can be made.  In the talk there were suggestions of what we, as individuals can do to engage youth at different levels in ways that will mitigate the problems that occur in stressed and under stimulated brains.

 

It was probably a depressing talk for many, but I did emphasize that there are solutions.  I as a paediatrician have not been able to ignore these facts as I am faced with them daily, and in a way so much greater than when I started in practice.  I am always pleased to discuss this topic, and alongside my wife Lee whose 35 year career as a professor of paediatrics at Sick Kids in Toronto has veered entirely to the exploration of solutions to such problems, we would love to address any questions.  My email is afordjones@mac.com.  Please email me if you would like a copy of the talk.

 

Your scribe

 

Anthony Ford-Jones