Minutes of the Rotary Club of Burlington Central. 21st of June 2018 

Chair Janet Canavan.

There was a warm welcome for Rick Howarth, a long time member of the club who has not been with us for some time. 

Our one visitor was Sherry Police who is visiting with Jamie Edwards on her way to do a triathlon. Abraham is absent today, writing an exam.

The 50-50 draw, a fundraiser for the Rotary International hosting dinner was won by David Roscoe who generously donated the $90 to the club.

The Lakeside Committee were introduced by Terry Sedore and Joe Watson. The committee members who were present were asked to stand and seemed to comprise about two thirds of the members present at breakfast today! Gerry Willard announced that around 200 tickets have been sold so far but only five of those to Rotarians! It was suggested that a male blast be sent out to encourage purchase of Lakeside tickets. This event always sells out so we’re encouraged to get on with that. 

Bryce Leggatt was last year's chairman. Randy Reeve was in charge of sponsorships. Keith Williams is dealing with marketing for the event. Randy Reeve is soliciting wineries. Eric Anderson is arranging signage and recognitions. Catherine Brady just does so much including being the Treasurer and organizing the silent auction. Items are solicited, preferably big ticket items around $300-$500. Sheila Welham remembers everything! Mae Radford is involved with volunteers. Lawrence Leung is the Board rep.

Next-Door Social Space is our local charity. Halton Woman's Place is our partner, very well connected, and will be selling raffle tickets and will donate 40% of the sales to the club. It is hoped that this will be a good source of revenue.

On Saturday and Sunday of the Lakeside a la Carte weekend, volunteers will be needed for set up. Burlington Green will be during the heavy lifting on the day but cleanup will be relatively straightforward and volunteers from Rotary will be assisting them. The rental company does the takedown of tables and tents etc.

The goal is to make $60,000. It will be, as usual a splendid event with something in the region of 30 wineries and breweries involved and similar number of restaurants.  A big selling point should be the remarkable value of the tickets: $100 each with $50 of that being tax deductible; quite a bargain for the best Summer party in Burlington!

Regrettably where the Hamilton Spectator gave $15,000 worth of in-kind advertising support but most regrettably, they've chosen not to do that this year. Yellow Robot, described as a boutique marketing company will be taking over this function. Kimberly Calderbank is in charge of that and is very proactive.

Lawrence Leung thanked the club for the excellent induction dinner last week. He said perhaps we can do it again!

Happy Dollars were offered for number of trips and celebrations. Joe Watson was celebrated for his amazing hosting of the Lakeside committee which he did in the boardroom that he rented at the golf club and provided his own wine and cheese and they clearly had an excellent time.

Mae Radford was invited to accept a donation of $21,000 from Royal LePage to the Carpenter Hospice, one of our long-time partners.

Nancy Penny is a board member of the newly incorporated Telling Tales Festival, now in its 10th year. The theme this year will be Superheroes and she showed up wearing her own superhero cape. Books for the ever popular book swap are requested and Gerry Willard has kindly agreed to keep them in his garage.

The RI international hosting dinner will be starting with a reception at 5:30 at the LaSalle Park hopefully to be accompanied by the Teen Tour Band. There will be a bar, toasts, picture taking and then finally dinner, 7pm until 9 o'clock when the guests will be returned to Toronto.

On Saturday, October 13 there will be a mystery tour and activities, one of President Elect Laurence Leung’s star activities for his tenure. It will start at 12:30 and there will be a dinner at Mapleview after.

The Rotary Burlington Music Festival in its 20th year returns in November.  Volunteers and donors for the scholarships will be welcome.

Eric Anderson introduced Rene Papin, today’s speaker, a member of the club since 2010. Rene is a contender for Counciller of Ward 1.

Recalling the great and unconditional love he received from his mother, along with his 5 siblings, Rene gave us an emotional account of the birth of his firstborn at a terrifying 28 weeks of gestation weighing only 2 lbs. 4 oz. who suffered significant perinatal difficulties, so common in those days, some 32 years ago. Darryl spent more than two months in McMaster Children's Hospital and finally was able to go home on Christmas day. The boundless, and unconditional love and devotion of his family helped him to thrive to the best of his ability and to overcome significant obstacles.

Rene’s experience in the wilderness made for a gripping tale: he went moose hunting with an old friend and, being wintertime and shortly after a snowstorm there was a large amount of snow that obscured an 8 foot cliff which Rene walked off, fortunately nicely cushioned by the snow drift, but in the process he lost his compass. Fortunately he still had a map, and the memory of instructions given to him about how to manage in the wilderness. There was a blizzard and he was disoriented. He follow a stream back to the lake with images of Russian soldiers, frozen to death still holding their guns, darting in his mind. He ended up at a lake, unfortunately not the right one. On his way however he heard a whistle which his friend had packed the same morning. Rene recalls not being quite sure why his friend was bothering with a whistle but was later to discover first hand the utility of a whistle in the woods, as shouting in a forest is ineffectual. He was finally rescued and taken back to the camp where he was thawed out first in front of a big fire and then in the sauna. Fortunately (!) he was encased in ice which effectively allowed him to stay relatively warm within his layers of clothing; even then he was almost in shock and hypothermic. He recalled the determination to live that got him through this significant ordeal.

Rick Howarth asked Rene to join Rotary thinking that he needed more in his life than just work. Rick and Dan Lawrie knew that René wanted to do good in this community and this seemed a perfect fit.

Rene started working for London Life in 1983 starting with door-to-door life insurance sales. His description of the look on the faces of his prospective customers who had arranged the meeting on the telephone, when they saw a tall black man at the door when they clearly were not expecting one. Many bought insurance from him, and he is convinced that they did so in order not to appear prejudiced!  Where his employers assumed that he would only be selling insurance to black people he ended up selling record amounts of insurance, mainly to white people, winning trips and awards in the process. 10 years ago he joined Dan Lawrie Insurance where he worked altogether too hard.

Yesterday the marijuana legalization bill was passed and will come into law in October on the 17th. The complex regulations that will be required to manage this in businesses is astounding. In brief, there are 205,000 licensed recipients of medicinal marijuana and they have to be accommodated in the workplace. No one is allowed to work within six hours of taking recreational marijuana but it's by prescription, they must be accommodated one way or another, clearly not if they’re to be operating dangerous machinery etc. but in that case they have to be given other jobs. One is not allowed to ask why people are being treated with cannabis but one can ask the ratio of CBD to THC to find out the extent to which they might be stoned by their prescription because if problems happen when an employee is stoned the liability can come back to the employer. (THC is the component that gives the psychic effects to marijuana.  Most medical results are from the non-psychoactive CBD.  THC is the component that can be found in the urine for  up to several weeks after ingestion and is the component sought in recreational marijuana.) 

It remains to be seen how insurance companies manage reimbursement for marijuana that is prescribed. If it ends up with a government supplied DIN number full coverage may be provided, but in the meantime some companies may provide healthcare spending accounts to cover it.

It's an enormously complex area. There are many minefields to cross in the implementation of the legalization of marijuana.

We thanked Rene for his heartfelt and fascinating account of this part of his life.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:30.

Anthony Ford-Jones