Minutes Of Breakfast Meeting of The Rotary Club of Burlington Central. 12 July 2018
Pres. Lawrence Leung presiding.
Our guests were introduced by Sheila Welham: guests and speakers for today were Kari Osfolk, Marco Herrera, a recent RYLA delegate and our own exchange student, on his last day with us, Abraham. Abraham’s host-parents were also guests, and Eva from the Lakeshore Club. (May the scribe be forgiven for not putting in surnames but they were not registered in the book.)
Pres. Lawrence said it was a sad day as we would have to say goodbye to Abraham who will be returning to Peru very shortly. There will be a farewell party at Owen and Nima McElhinney's House on July 13 at 7 PM to which all are invited. Replies are requested to Sheila along with details of anything one might be bringing. Hors d’oeuvres and dessert will be served.
Andrew Gaydon announced that on July 19 the golf tournament would take place and that a full house of players have been gathered. All supporters of this Tournament were thanked.
Kathleen announced that Beth and Dean Rutty have kindly invited members and spouses to join them at their home for a social event on one of two days: the 22nd or 29th of July. A further email will be issued to try and pin down a date. Various activities will be offered and potluck of food and drink will be the fare and a barbecue will be available. We are reminded that it is a 2 to 2 1/2 hour drive to get there.
Throughout the meeting, there were slides being projected on the LaSalle Park hosting event from the Rotary International conference where several Rotarians from Japan had a wonderful evening. They presented to the club an envelope containing ¥70,000 which equates to C$800 a very generous thank you gift. Clearly everyone had a good time and Lawrence practised his bowing throughout the evening. Joe Watson reminisced about his group study exchange visit to Japan where he was hosted magnificently by Japanese Rotarians over an eight week period. The crowning event was a 30 minute audience with the Emperor of Japan.
So for 285 or more tickets have been sold for Lakeside À La Carte. We are strongly encouraged to purchase tickets before they become generally available and hopefully people will respond to the forthcoming email blast.
On August 15 at 630 the bike ride will take place and so for 15 of anticipated 29 riders are signed up and they will start from the Beaver and Bulldog.
Jamie Edwards BBQ will be on 16 August.
Last Monday so the first board meeting. The committee chairs’ goals are all set and they are looking for help to achieve these goals.
Planning for the John Souvage leadership camp will be starting shortly.
Sgt. at Arms Mae Radford was taking no prisoners today. We were reminded that it was five months since legislation changed the words of the National anthem to “in all of us” from “in all thy sons”, and it was about time we got it right, and that we could be expecting a fine for not doing so. There were fines all round for anyone who had not brought any bottles of wine for the big Lakeside prize. Next week will do just fine, thank you.
It was clearly a major disappointment to Mae there were no snitches this week.
It seems that we were quite fortunate to have Karmel Sakran in our midst today. It appears that he sat with a group of noisy England supporters in a pub during the ill-fated semifinal against Croatia and cheered loudly for Croatia when they scored. It seems that he was lucky to get away with his life. It was a long story and Albert Schmidt felt compelled to get up to thank the speaker.
Mike Molloy and his wife recently welcomed Moë our past exchange student from Japan to stay with them. Mike and Shirley are safely moved to the new house in Ancaster and the very same week their daughter moved into her first home.
Owen gave thanks for Abraham’s presence among us for the past year and declared that he had learned as much from Abraham as vice versa. Eric, recently outbound, came home last night very tired from his excellent trip.
Cuppy Katz will spend two weeks in Newfoundland.
Pres. Lawrence pronounced Glenn Warnica Rotarian of the week. Glenn has recently organized the bike ride among other activities. He summed up his feelings about Rotary has a wonderful opportunity to be part of an organization that does so much good with so little by coming together as a group. He took seven years of sabbatical from being a Rotarian but when he came back it was with a renewed vigour. With reference to the recent Rotary International conference he said “how easy it is to come up with 1.2 million friends!”
Owen and Nima hosted an event celebrating two projects in Guatemala where money was transferred to host clubs who would be managing water and gardening projects. Five Guatemalans came to visit. There was great participation from our club.
Our three student speakers gave their brief presentations in front of Roy Cooper who was to judge their performance.
Abraham described his wonderful experience in Ottawa and in Québec. He thanked with sincere feeling all of his wonderful host families who have made his year such a memorable one and thanked the club for the warm welcome at Thursday breakfasts which he has always enjoyed.
Kari Osfolk is to go to Taiwan on August 20. She is excited to have the opportunity to learn of a new culture, to learn Mandarin which she has made a head start on with the help of a tutor, and to explore what sounds like a beautiful island. She gave us some history about Taiwan and its relationship to mainland China. She will be going to a private school where there are many rules including the wearing of uniforms, the prohibition of makeup or nail polish, no jewelry and neutral hair colour, but is glad to be able to blend in just a little, where she knows how much she will inevitably stand out. She’s glad to have one other Rotarian exchange student in the same school with her.
Marco Herrera described his excellent experience at the RYLA leadership camp and showed us a video made by some of the participants. He summed it up by saying that 27 strangers, in five days became one family. He is in his third year at the University of Western Ontario doing an honours biology degree with a minor in medical sciences specifically in neurobiology. He hopes to go into medicine eventually. He’s been part of Rotarac, his mother and grandfather having been Rotarians before him. He described it as a group of young professionals learning to develop leadership skills. Many of the young people at the camp were not related in any way to Rotary and he hoped that he would be able to plant the seed of Rotary in them during this period. During the camp there was a dinner with a group of Rotarians from two Orangeville clubs where he was able to meet exchange students and a group of Rotarians. They were exposed to a number of excellent guest speakers on subjects such as goal setting, public speaking, finding strengths, values and ethical dilemmas, suicide identification and prevention; “SafeTalk”, and arts and creativity, music and rhythm. He found the entire event to be life-changing and a wonderful network of new friends. He came out having been exposed to public speaking which had been an area of weakness for him and judging by his speech he certainly learned a lot.
The speakers were thanked and presented with certificates. Roy Cooper declared that they all should receive an A+. Glenn Warnica thanked them declared that Rotary would be in good hands with young people like this.
Pres. Lawrence wound up the meeting by thanking all of the members of the setup team. He announced that next week’s speaker will be his son who will present on his profession, urology, and he intimated we would learn about bits being lopped off, others divided, and some things attached. Not for the squeamish it would seem.
Your Scribe
Anthony Ford-Jones
