Rotary Club of Burlington Central 7 September 2017
Janet Canavan presiding.
The guests today were:
Abraham Yanarico Borda our exchange student from Peru.
Owen McElhinney introduced his wife Neema McElhinney and her friend from Kathmandu, Nepal Bhawani Gurung from the Rotary club of Bagmati. They also introduced their guest Arita Gurung.
Ms. Gurung presented the banner from her Rotary club of Bagmati to Janet Canavan.
There will be a District Conference in Mississauga at the Living Arts Centre on September 23.
Richard Pass is keen that any young people between the ages of 15 and 17 - grade 10 through 12 should be given the opportunity of attending the Leadership Camp which is in its 21st year. Members are asked to consider inviting young people they might know to consider applying for this excellent opportunity.
Next week there will be a review of the charity budget.
The Rotary Leadership Institute will be at the Holiday Inn in Cambridge for consecutive sessions 1 to 3 with Mike Molloy facilitating. There are links to be found on the Rotary website.
On September 21 the 4 Club Presidents’ cluster meeting will occur and we're asked to submit anything that might be put on their agenda and please to email Janet Canavan. The assistant Gov. John Zinke will be facilitating.
Abraham, our exchange student from Peru presented his week. He is still finding his way in English but did read a nicely written presentation and gave thanks to Karmel for his gift of a cell phone for the year presenting him with a very fine woollen hat, traditional to Peru and knitted by Abraham's mother. He also presented the district 4455 banner to our club.
The Sgt. at Arms René Papin had to fine himself for not wearing a pin but did not overlook others’ transgressions.
The guest speaker was introduced by Dick Scott, Rod Collard, a member of the club who was presenting his classification speech. I gather he wasn't given too much time to prepare the speech so the depth and the quality of the speech was all the more astounding for the short time of preparation. Rod has a great reputation as an educator and Dick had known him for many years in the school system.
Rod started by saying he had a few things currently to be grateful for: his 74-year-old brother has just ‘graduated’ from long-term care and gone home after four years and 13 brain surgeries.
Rod’s wife Arlene had had some heart issues that unfortunately caused them to cancel their trip to Vienna but happily is doing fine.
Rod give us a bit of his background. His father was orphaned very young, and despite the fact that he came from a wealthy family, after a number of years they clearly were fed up with having to look after him and sent him off to Canada as a ‘Homeboy” (which can also be read ‘indentured servant’ in many such cases). Fortunately he did quite well in that setting though never near anything but comparative poverty. He died at the age of 76 and Rod's mother died at 93.
Rod was born in a stone house in Mountsberg where the conservation area is now, that many of us will have seen. It was sold by his grandfather for $8000 but lately went for 2.4 million. When it was bought there was no plumbing which is the way that Rod grew up in that house and other than adding plumbing it remained the same way as it had been. Rod showed us pictures of Archie's Creek where he and his brother played building rafts like Huckleberry Finn, only Rod’s didn’t float too well. The water was freezing but you could drink it in those days. It was close to McCrae's station named after Archie McRae. They then moved to a raspberry farm in Burlington where the current Burlington VW dealer is, and later made a number of moves in Burlington.
Much of Rod's speech centred around some wonderful photographs, some of old days Burlington: Spencer Smith Park before it was reclaimed land and before hurricane Hazel. Every year he would go off with his father and brother to Algonquin for a couple of weeks in the total wilderness and remembers trips to North Tea Lake and the old and extremely heavy cedar strip canoe. He was nine years old in 1958 and remembers fishing for their supper, speckled trout, usually several of them, from nearby streams.
His memories of early days in Burlington included trains, piles of coal, an unguarded railway track, a lumber yard and a junk yard that he had to navigate to go to school each day, and all the fun times that he had. He remembers swimming to the “second tower” from the Lakeshore.
It may become as a surprise to many of us but Rod was not the model student. He had once to be literally dragged by the ear from the pool hall by his principal. He claims something close to a record of having been suspended twice in one day while in high school. He maintains he graduated with a 51.6% mark. His real ambition was to go to the College of Arts, and we will soon hear why, but his parents could not afford to send him there. Rod also remembers never having wanted for anything as a child, there was always food on the table, and having had an extremely happy childhood.
Rod went to teachers’ college 1967 aged 18. He had his degree in 3 1/2 years. There he met Arlene at the Tree House, now the Water Street Cooker (Emma’s Back Porch I think it is now). They were married at 20 and Rod couldn't even drink at his own wedding. They each earned $4200 a year. When they went to try and buy house only half of that was considered in Arlene’s case because she was a woman!
Ron told us of the love of his life Arlene and his children and grandchildren.
He spent 49 years in the Board of Education, 19 years as principal and 16 years after retirement! He was seconded for six months to work with school dropouts and to determine what led this to happen. It was clear to him that the commonest denominator was the lack of literacy that could be traced back to inability to read at grade 3. He also spent 11 years in Buffalo at the D’Youville College. He was appalled that even today reading is not actually “taught” after age 8. Girls tended to drop out because of social issues.
Rod remembers Don Morrison who worked with him with "irremediable” students. They went on trips up north following the Group of Seven trails. He remembers being on a canoe trip miles from nowhere chasing moose while 9/11 was happening.
Rod is an extraordinarily talented artist and happily he brought some of his paintings, some of the very few that he still has, all watercolours, but the most fascinating was his watercolour illustrated and beautifully handwritten, calligraphed might be a better term, journals that he does when traveling, his and Arlene's passion. Unfortunately he stopped painting for many years but only restarted his journals which are truly works of art, real jewels. He's been to Tuscany, and it was there he restarted the journals. His been to Provence, Venice, Barcelona, Ireland, Newfoundland, Florida. He works with photographs or sometimes live. He related how difficult it is to do watercolours because of the speed at which the paper dries and the difficulty controlling the paint in that situation. Looking at his journals it didn't strike me that he had any problem at all, a real master of that art!
Ron was thanked for his wonderful story of the slice of life that all took place so close to home here in Burlington.
Click below to see Rod's really good scrapbook stories and drawings:
photoalbums/rod-collard-s-drawings
Anthony Ford-Jones
