Obviously severely affected by the unbelievably cold weather President Catherine called to order the meeting of the Rotary Club of Portage and Main. After realizing the mistake, the meeting of the Rotary Club of Burlington Central for Thursday 8th January, 2015, was called to order. A fine job was made of saying grace, singing the anthem and making the loyal toast by the members designated for the day, followed by the recital of the Four Way Test.
We were delighted to have as one of the guests our very good friend Katri, our exchange student from Finland 3 years ago, who is paying us a visit, staying sequentially with all her old host families. Lucky them! Welcome back Katri!
We also welcomed Beth Rutty, Bert Radford and our guest speaker Adam Bienenstock.
Roy Cooper was invited to join the president to present Roy Lambert a Paul Harris Scholarship.
The spoils of the recent Grey Cup Pool were divided between the winners, Glen Warniker $30 and Andrew Gaydon, $135. The remainder was presented to Polio Plus. It was a good haul given that there was absolutely no skill involved.
Juliette Gateau described her winter activities including snow shoeing and rolling in the snow after a hot tub! She thanked the club members for her Christmas present.
On a serious note she drew our attention to yesterday’s massacre at Charlie Hebdo and asked that we all rise and have a minute of silence to mark this appalling tragedy.
Katrie addressed us and described her most enjoyable time with Bert and Mae Radford on Boxing Day, thence to Join the Ruttys up North for the New Year. She is currently staying with Gerry and Doris Willard and will be staying with Johanna and Steve Hahn before seeing some other friends. She is studying physiotherapy at university in Finland. She is a long distance runner and I gather she has been out in the cold during her stay as it is quite balmy compared with her home in Finland!
President Catherine drew our attention to the Rotary Club of London that will be celebrating 100 Years of Rotary in March and will be honoured by a visit by Gary Huang, RI President. Rotary Club of Meadowvale will be host to Loreen Harper who is championing the cause of Maternal and Infant Health Tuesday Jan 13th at the Toronto Convention Centre as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series. Full details will be available on Club Runner.
Sergeant at Arms Rene Papin announced a continuation of the Football Pool in the future with an increased ante, with proceeds to go to Polio Plus once again.
Having been featured in SNAP Burlington magazine this month he thought it only fit to fine himself for self promotion.
Among the Happy Dollars mentioned were Rene Papin for his splendid performance at the Christmas Party where he gave so much pleasure to the many children and indeed to the rest of us. Thanks Rene!
Gerry Willard was especially thankful for the recent Rotary Memorial Forest sales of a tree and a park bench, originally championed by our late friend Roy Stojanovich.
Anthony Ford-Jones welcomed the return of a number of members who have been quite sick lately or in hospital for difficult surgery. It was so good to see their cheerful countenances today, this coldest day of the year.
President Catherine was very complimentary about the Pointsettias that were so beautiful this year. A big thanks to Andrew Gaydon for this.
Steve Martin recently celebrated the birth of a granddaugter thoughtfully born on his father’s birthday.
Owen and Nima McElhinney spent New Years eve at Niagara Falls enjoying the great spirit and fun down by the Falls where they were very cold but happy. Mike and Shirley Molloy meanwhile, were up in the Skylon staying very nice and warm, well stoked, looking down on the festivities. He didn’t sound at all disappointed not to be freezing down below! Mike will be heading to Guyana for 10 days, to complete a seniors home refurbishment project.
Rene Papin found a couple of unpaid invoices from 1997 and 2005 and requested that the member, whom I will refrain from embarrassing in this bulletin, step up and deal with these oversights. Karmel Sakran helpfully pointed out that there was a statute of limitations and the member, whose name wild horses could not draw from this scribe, instructed Rene to consult his lawyer.
Mike Malloy introduced the guest speaker Adam Bienenstock.
Adam has, for a number of years been involved in creating naturalised playgrounds. His business has spread and he is now doing work throughout the United States and he has been a consultant in Australia and in New Zealand. it has allowed him to develop the conversation on the importance of connecting to nature.
Today, being the coldest day of the year so far brought to mind the fact that children in certain areas are not allowed to go out and play in the playground if it's too cold. In Hamilton, that cut-off temperature is -10°C. In Nunavut, it is -50°C! At the other extreme, in Arizona it is +3°C if it's raining. He showed us some wonderful pictures of his own children playing and rolling on the ground in a forested area. One of his children, on being asked what he was doing, said "I am mulch”. How many children are given that opportunity in our urban centred population. We saw a map of accessibility through the ages. Described as "Roam rates", his great-grandfather had a range of about 10 km at the age of eight. (your scribe, at eight years of age, to go to school six days a week, walked by himself to the train station some 10 minutes, took a 20 minute train journey, changed to catch a public bus for another 20 minutes. I don't remember any incidents of any concern during the couple of years I did this.) Currently children have a range of up to 300 yards and usually much less. This has had a huge effect on life and children's connection to nature.
The average age of attendees to the Royal Botanical Gardens is 64 years! There is very little new input, though the RBG is working at making it more attractive to young families, and all around us our woods are abandoned. On one of his visits to Australia he went to 20 parks and saw "no children". The situation is much the same here in Canada. There is a small group of children who have been allowed out to play furter afield, their parents being counter current and progressive, but sadly even those children, having gone out for a while don't keep it up as there is simply no one to play with.
In Hamilton there is a $5000 fine for tobogganing in certain parks. Trees are considered to be a nuisance and just requiring expensive maintenance. Most city parks are a deserted wasteland that just need to be mowed on a regular basis.
In those naturalised playgrounds that Adam and his company have made so beautifully, it turns out that small children are in fact having more accidents… Not the kind of accidents that you might have been thinking, but usually wetting themselves because they just don't want to come back inside. A very typical situation in the sterile school playground is that children are bullied and tormented and would rather stay inside where they have no problem relieving themselves as they hide from the bullies by staying in the bathroom!
In one newly installed natural playground the incidents of bullying fell dramatically from 30 incidents to 1 in just one month. Children were less aggressive, and played better, shared better, and works better when they came back in to the classroom.
Playgrounds have been torn up and replaced by "safe” but sadly uninspiring play equipment that attracts children with physical prowess, and there is nowhere for the others to play, to find a quiet spot, to find any peace, and they are ripe for abuse at the hands of their aggressive peers.
Adam is on an advisory committee with Richard Louv, author of "The Last Child in the Woods”, and the originator of the term Nature Deficit Disorder. In modern day Canada there is a desperate need to innovate, to engage kids’ brains. Creativity and innovation are absolutely essential to the ongoing development of our new society since we have lost our manufacturing base. The ability to innovate, to be active and engaged and to be resilient are essential attributes. Google, when interviewing potential candidates for work would reject out of hand a young person who says that he spent his childhood on a computer but would gladly take on those who had concentrated on outside activities where they had learned to be self sufficient and had become resilient and innovative. The brain of a "computer kid" is useless to them.
Teachers, when trying to get their classes out into some kind of outside activity or field trip have to go through seven hours of paperwork just to provide the students with a nature experience.
How does one judge a space? It has to hit all five senses; only that will be any good for kids. It is that development of a kinaesthetic sense that is good for brain development. Ideally, such play spaces should be a reflection of the natural environment. There should be material for children's sense of wonder and this cannot come from plastic and steel.
Once, while designing a naturalised playground, the owners insisted on removing pine trees. They were afraid that a pinecone might hit a child on the head and didn't want to deal with the consequences of this. Flowers had to be eliminated to avoid bringing in bees. He showed us so many wonderful pictures of naturalised playgrounds, such a contrast with the stark and sterile playgrounds currently prevalent in Canadian schools.
One delightful anecdote was to do with the log built into a natural playground in a private school in Toronto. Adam was called a while after the opening, a call of distress that "the bark is peeling". The children had been forbidden against their natural inclination, to remove the bark from the log. His recommendation was that they should be allowed to peel the bark. The log was stripped clean in no time flat, and the children, aged six, came up with a game that involved creating a new civilisation in which bark was the unit of currency! He had to bring in more bark for them! I wish I could repeat all of the delightful and amusing stories that Adam entertained us with. It was such food for thought about where our "civilisation" is going to and how much work we have to do to change things to bring our children and grandchildren back into nature. (Your scribe, a paediatrician has on occasions, given written prescriptions to children to “go outside and play in the woods”, a sure antidote for depression and anxiety and ADHD.)
While thanking Adam, Barb Keck reminded us to work hard at getting our grand children into nature and I would strongly recommend giving as a gift to our grandchildren, family passes to the Royal Botanical Gardens, local conservation areas, the zoo, provincial parks etc.
Adam Bienenstock’s company motto is "Our work is all play". Please see Adam's website
www.naturalplaygrounds.ca where you can see his portfolio of natural playgrounds, places to gladden the hearts of any child… Or adult for that matter!
Before closing, Richard Pass brought us the good news that David Dean is nearly out of hospital and doing well.
