Guests Sean Tomkins and David Tomkins, Mana and Anel 

 

 

Sean Tomkins was excited to announced that at the club the ceremony he attended he has been picked to go to Peru. He's already started working on the language and checking out embassies, flags, maps et cetera.

 

Anel had an exciting week of theatre and still more theatre. She's already started rehearsing her next play having only just finished a play last week called Four a.m. A number of Rotarians came to her play.

 

Mana went to the Rotary club of Oakville Trafalgar for a lunch meeting where she was well received and heard a talk on the history of the contributions of Canadian aboriginals to our country. She had dinner with Bernie and Elaine Scrivener. She enjoyed meeting Emma who was an exchange student to Japan for an afternoon of cookie baking. She also attended the outbounds’ announcement today which was very exciting. Subsequent to a session of owl releasing with Peter Thoem a few weeks ago she went with a birdwatcher to the seniors club for meeting. She enjoyed her host family’s favourite activity of board games on the snow day.

 

Mana has had a super busy week. She went with Rob and and now two Oakville Trafalgar Rotary club and also to the Stony Creek Rotary Club with Jamie Edwards but they have 18 members she described as very enthusiastic. She also went to dinner with Bernie and Elaine and loved the trout. Mana is all about the fish! She also admired Bernie's totem pole. She was excited for the outbound student who was picked to go to Japan. Stephanie. She also met Nima's family from Nepal and was fascinated by their very different culture. She attended the Toastmasters Club and was amazed at the challenge of public speaking which she says she doesn't do well, but actually she does remarkably well in in English.

 

She received a package from home with some favourite foods, and on snow day enjoyed fish tacos. Still on the fish theme, she made a beautiful fish origami for the club this morning.

 

Mae Radford, Sgt at Arms just got back from a Rotary visit to Mexico an exchange friendship group with nine people including two non-Rotarians. She thanked Catherine Brady for being sergeant at arms during her absence. She attended three separate clubs while in Mexico where they were treated royally. Their group will be coming to Canada in October and we can hope to receive them sometime after October 31.

 

Joe Watson paid $20 of what sounds like hush money for some misdemeanour. The details were suitably disguised so that the scribe was unable to determine what it was.

 

In 1759 the first brew of Guinness was made. Mae and Bert Radford will be auctioning a dinner at their house entitled “Come and Have a Pint” with a lot of exciting sounding and very green Irish food. 8 or 10 people will be able to come and the tickets will be sold individually. This will be on 17 March.

 

Glen Warnica recommends that we look at Leroy van Dyck’s ‘The Auctioneer’ because next week there will be an auction for these tickets.

 

Several lucky people were able to put in happy dollars or more to claim Mana’s fish origamis.

 

Robert Martin's son is in Australia and had an exciting time as an intern in one of the hospitals outside the main centre where he saw some extraordinary outback people whose lives are very very harsh and tended only to be seen by medical facilities when in extremis because of the very limited medical care. As Bob said, “Thank God for our medical system"

 

Owen McElhinney gave thanks for seeing Mike Molloy back from being away for some time on a cruise with 18 friends. Mike also went to Dundas Valley for a make-up where his wife Shirley is a member.

 

Glen Warnica has just been away on a cruise enjoying water slides and zip-lines out at sea.

 

Mae called up the past presidents who were at here today, Mike Molloy, Glen Warnica, Jamie Edwards, Bernie Scrivener, Janet Canavan, and Mae Radford, all Rotarians of the Week. She was thankful that they continue to come to Rotary after their presidency is complete.

 

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Today's speaker was to have been Marnie Alexander but she's sick and Bob Martin was kind enough to step into her place and was introduced by Sean Thomson. 

 

Bob is part of a nine lawyer chambers, Martin Hillier, seven dealing predominantly with personal injury and medical malpractice and the other two, himself included, with wills and estates. He emphasised that making a will, reviewing it, attending to it, is relatively inexpensive and useful. He sees so many mistakes and frank negligence in the creation and maintenance of wills that ultimately cost a huge amount to sort out making the initial outlay relatively trivial. If one is not vigilant there will always be a piece missing that needs to be fixed. He gave an extraordinary example of the most complex estate that doesn't really bear summary other than to say it was so complex it is unlikely anything like that would ever be seen again! The point of the story however was that the lack of an adequate will made at the right time led ultimately, to legal costs upwards of close to $300,000! It was that bad!

 

The bottom line was really that one should keep original wills. People tend to forget they had them, destroyed them, locked them up in safety deposit boxes that cannot be opened. He feels that a rule of thumb is to check them every five years and update them as you can. Costs may be a few hundred dollars. Home-made wills are almost always a source of problems that will need to be fixed for far greater legal costs than they would have cost if done properly the first time.

 

Bernie Scrivener had earlier toasted the Queen, Canada and our Parliamentary system. It was a opportune day to make some comments about the current problems with SNC Lavalin that he believes will unfold allowing us to see who we are, what we are, and where we are going as a country. He likes to quote from the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail that he feels to be the two prime credible papers in Canada. Bob urged us to be extremely vigilant and circumspect with the news and what we believe and not take it at its face value in this current climate of alternative facts. He quoted the clerk of the privy Council Michael Wernick, the clarity, the candour and the lack of hesitancy with which he spoke. He holds the highest position in government, not a political job, a job that should be and is impartial. He was very concerned about his community and Canadian society and about the growing concerns about the rising tide of violence and social media trolling, the “vomitorium”, so aptly put. Bob described some of the chequered past of SNC Lavalin in their involvement in North Africa and South America where the rule of law is very questionable and that to go along with their rules challenges our moral compass. Clearly bribes were offered for government contracts and illegal deals were done.

 

As a lawyer he pointed out that plea bargains are an essential part of our legal system, the system depends on them and would break down without them. It's very rare that a judge will refuse to entertain a plea bargain without which much unnecessary and lengthy trial time would clog everything up.

 

SNC Lavalin tried to forge a plea bargain that was complicated by politics and subsequently our political system finds herself in a big mess. Roy McMurtry, a friend of Bob's father who was close to him while Minister of Health when Roy McMurtry was attorney general: Roy McMurtry bemoaned the fact that where, in the past, three parties would collaborate for the best results for the people of Canada, now there was nothing but polarisation driven by media and politicians eager to discolour the facts. On the positive side, SNC Lavalin, after a long history of problems, tried to clean up their act by firing their entire board. Sinking SNC Lavalin would cause them to pay out millions but would lose many jobs. Sometimes it's difficult to take the high road.

 

Glen Warnica thanked Bob for his excellent and thought-provoking talk and summarised the discussion of wills with a paraphrase of "do it once, do it right”  “do it once, and then every five years, and do it right”. above all he praised Bob for invariably being objective.

 

Next week Kelly Russell will be coming to address the club on the subject of Dog Guides in Canada.

Anthony Ford-Jones