Rotary Club of Burlington Central September 8, 2016
President Mike Molloy opened the meeting.
Our guests today were Jennifer Hourston, Guest of Kathy Thomas; Nina Herne is visiting from Texas.
Announcements:
Donations of scholarships for the Rotary Music Festival are being requested in support of this annual club event coming up in November.
On Sunday 25th of September celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the start of Rotary in Canada will take place at Jake's Boathouse. Jamie Edwards is inviting a number of past presidents and asked the members for contact information of any past presidents known to them who are not on the current list.
Cathy Thomas gives us the sad news of the death of Barb Keck's father.
Victor, our new exchange student is not with us today as he didn't wish to miss the start of the first full day of classes and has been given a pass for attendance here today.
There will be a training programme for the Youth Exchange potential host families and counsellors on Saturday, 17 September. A lot can be learned about this invaluable program. We are reminded that there is only one host family currently involved with Victor's year with our club. Sheila Welham knows our club well to be a generous and engaged, a club that has always stepped up to the plate and is confident that this year will be no different.
There will be a club president training session in which Mike Molloy will be meeting with other club presidents and gaining insight into the operations of different clubs.
On September 27 there will be four club meeting at the Burlington Art Gallery at which the Rotary International President Elect will be speaking. Cocktails will be followed by lunch. It is hoped that they will be some new members from each club who will be inducted by the President-elect.
On November 12 there will be a group of Rotarians going to New York City to attend the United Nations day, a special Canadian session hosted by the Canadian ambassador to the United States. It's possible that there will be a bus going down there. It's always a pleasant weekend, an opportunity to meet Rotarians from other countries.
The District Conference will take place on October 14-16 in Niagara Falls.
Saturday, November 5 the Rotary leadership Institute will take place in Waterloo, an ideal venue for new members to learn more about Rotary and how they can become engaged, an ideal opportunity to mix and to work with other Rotarians from different clubs.
Sgt at Arms: Andrew Gaydon was Sgt at Arms, his first time ever. He claimed that he wouldn't be taking revenge after all these years but proceeded to do a pretty good job of cleaning up right round the room. Among numerous others, he pointed at your scribe, and said that I rarely got fined because I was a "nice guy". Well there's no more mister nice guy and I got fined. Finally after a fair bit of carnage at the expense of several members he noted that Owen McElhinney was a Scot. He thought that he should pay a fine on behalf of all Scots who had such an easy time of it with Britain always being so kind to them, so decent and supportive in so many ways and for so long. Just to prove the point he said he would pay the fine for him. Jamie Edwards chipped in that you can tell and Englishman, but you can't tell him much.
Bill Clarkson announced that he is celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary by going on an Alaska cruise this afternoon.
Gerry Willard was thankful that having gone through a bout of chest pain last week on assessment at the hospital was found to have no cardiac problems.
Roy Cooper celebrated spending time with his now school-aged great-grandchildren a relatively rare event for him and one which gave him great pleasure.
Elliott Vine announced that he and his wife have a Wheaton Terrier puppy who is now sleeping through the night!
Regrettably our guest speaker did not arrived today.
There was instead, a spirited discussion about the positive, and some of the less positive aspects of hosting youth exchange students from the perspective of past host parents. In sum however, a very positive tone of support for the program that largely outweighed any negatives or worries that people might have most of which are quite surmountable.
The meeting was adjourned a few minutes early.
