Today’s meeting got off to a reasonable start despite the fact that the Captain was AWOL.  I bet everyone reading this will take a look to see who the designated Captain was.

 

Guests today were: Shanda Hunter-Trottier – today’s speaker; Shauna and Todd Rainey – guests of Kathy Thomas; Donna-Lynn and Rob Galloway – Honorary Members of the club; Eric Bily – outbound exchange student going to Poland; Kim Bily – Eric’s mother.

 

Because Wicktor was not present, Eric Bily was asked to update us on his exchange.  Eric leaves August 17^th for a Rotary Club near Warsaw, Poland.  He mentioned that the name of the town was Woosch but I could find no town of that name in my Google search.

 

 

 

Kathy Thomas was presented with her 8^th Paul Harris Fellowship Award; Bruce Maybury finally got his diamond pin in recognition of becoming a Major Donor ($10,000.00 US or more) to the Rotary Foundation.  He had earlier received only the accompanied crystal recognition piece; Rob and Donna-Lynn received a joint Major Donor Award consisting of the diamond pin and crystal recognition piece.

Rob Galloway spoke briefly about the contribution our Rotary Club has made to RI with the early adoption of the sustaining membership within the club.  He stated that the Rotary Foundation is their charity because of all the good it does in the world. He also donated 4 Tiger Cat Tickets with the monies going to the Rotary Foundation. This was later auctioned off for $175.

 

Ron Lambert reported that 3 more foursomes were needed to fill the Golf Tournament with Golfers. He also requested that ALL members of the club donate a nice bottle of wine to be put in the wine fridge which is  part of a drawing at the Tournament. Please bring these to the next meeting at the club.

 

Kathy Thomas spoke about the history of the raffle at Lakeside which now is composed of 3 parts – nearly all of which is sponsored by Kathy and her family through Shauna’s employment with Air Canada who are providing 2 tickets to anywhere Air Canada flies within N. America; an Art piece worth $800 provided by Bronze Frog Gallery and a wheelbarrow full of wine including the wheelbarrow provided by Green Thumb Landscaping. Tickets are now available at $20 each or 3 for $50. The beneficiary is ROCK (Reach-Out Center For Kids).

 

Bernie Hanna was recognized as he and his other associates at CIBC Wood Gundy along with the wholesalers who provide their investment products are providing over $20,000 to OUR club fundraisers. Thank you Bernie!!

 

 

 

Mike Molloy also gave Bernie a big thank you for donating $500 to Rotary if he lost 50 lbs. over the next year.  Today was the weigh-in day and Mike was 53.5 lbs lighter than a year ago.  Well done Mike!! Mike also donated $500 to the Rotary Foundation matching Bernie’s donation.  Jamie and 5-6 others also agreed to donate a dollar for each pound lost.

Rod Collard was given a standing ovation for the fine job he did as Sergeant at Arms this past year.

 

 

 

Shanda is a speech Therapist and today’s presentation focused on Adult Services that she provides as separate from Child Services which she is also involved with at her Clinic.

Three arms of her Clinic’s work revolved around  1) accident or illness such as  a stroke therapy 2) rehabilitation and 3) social - reducing barriers and reluctance to become socially active because of speech issues.  She works with people to help them communicate better and to swallow as swallowing is apparently an impediment to communication in many cases – who knew?

Regarding 1) above she talked about dysphagia – communication difficulty due to such things as stroke, aneurism , brain injury, ALS, MS, Parkinson’s, oral cancers, and facial palsies. Although there is overlap, rehabilitation is used to help communication through muscle control in the mouth and vocal cords.  This is helpful in cases of stuttering. In their voice lab, assistance is provided for voice disorders, singing voice, professional voice and transgender voice therapy. She also treats dysfluency which is the inability to utter words you know – I have that problem sometimes. In the third arm of her therapy, social cognition is worked on where people communicate with social mishaps – saying the wrong thing at the wrong time; people who talk too much; people who miss key points; people who say one thing but their facial expression indicates otherwise . She also helps out in providing enhancements – improving certain areas of communication such as accent modification or rate modification to help people who speak too fast.

 

 

All in all, she outlined many communication problems that people have and for which she and her staff can provide assistance with at her clinics. Anthony Ford-Jones thanked Shanda for her excellent presentation and admitted that he learned a lot from her presentation. The usual Certificate was presented to Shanda.

 

President Mike thanked his Board of Directors for all their help and service over the past year and passed the gavel and mail box key to Janet Canavan to carry forward to the coming year.