Club Assembly – June 23, 2025
Oakville Golf Club
President Mitch Sabsabi called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m.
Richard Roberts gave the Land Acknowledgement
President Mitch led in the singing of the National Anthem.
President Mitch proposed a toast to King George lll and Canada.
George Vincent gave the invocation.
There were 20 club members and 1 guest in attendance
Guests
Adriana Sanchez’s son, Andre Bryant
Announcements
Ralf Soeder provided a recap of the Oakville Rotary Education Awards (OREA) on June 11 where $100K was given to 30 local Students. He thanked Larry Rodrigue for being the MC of the event, Joe Joseph for preparing the PowerPoint presentation with the student bios, Jean Wettlaufer for her help with the committee and Carol Chen for helping contact the schools. Zeus Eden a former recipient and now Press Secretary to the mayor of Toronto also spoke at the event.
Ralf also spoke about the PODS for the new Rotary year. Mike Fisher and Ron Hope will be two of the captains with two more to be confirmed later. He emphasized the importance of PODS in running our club meetings and urged everyone to respond to the POD captain when asked to help.
Mahendra announced that the Passport club is holding a “Grow Green” plant swap event at Coronation Park on July 15 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. More info to come.
Gary Comerford reminded members that the deadline for charities to submit a request for this year’s major RCO Foundation donation is July 15. To date the Foundation has received one submission and sent applications to two other groups who may apply.
Merger with the Rotary Club of Oakville West
Ralf summarized the current situation and plans to merge.
Our two clubs have worked closely over the years including sharing golf tournament and participation in the Rotary Online Auction. Both club boards are in favor of the merge and RCOW members have now voted to join our club. Ralf asked for a show of hands on accepting them into our club and all members present were in favor.
In order to ensure Rotary membership continuity, RCOW members will become members of our club prior to the end of the Rotary year. It is expected that 12 active and two honorary members will become members of RCO. They will be joining us at the July 7 meeting. Growing pains are expected as there are always differences in culture that need to be accommodated. All club members should be welcoming the new members.
Club Assembly
International
President Mitch mentioned that Michael Conway presented the International Committee report at a previous club meeting as he was at the RI convention this week.
Membership
Mike Henry reviewed the committees’ objectives and the accomplishments for the year including
- Reviewing and endorsing 12 prospective members
- Holding a fireside chat for new members at George Farrow’s house in January
- Adding a membership minute to club meetings
- Checking on members who have been seen for a while
- Assigned mentors to new members to help acclimatize them to the club
- There was a net increase of 6 members in this Rotary year, (12 new members, 6 departing members)
Community Service
Mike also reviewed the community service committees’ objectives and accomplishments for the Rotary year
- Five new committee members
- Two hands on activities, Salvation army Kettle in December and Earth Day Cleanup of Brook Valley Park in April.
- Reviewed and evaluated 13 new community donations totalling $87,100
- Support varied from High School Robotics teams to food insecurity charities (Food4Kids) to summer camps for children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder
Indigenous
George Vincent presented the report for the indigenous committee.
- The committee did not get up to speed until January when George took over the committee from David Peters who left the club but has progressed quickly, added new members and invited guest speakers to the committee meetings.
- Donations included
- Sheridan College bursaries totalling $10K to be distributed at the college’s discretion after reviewing with the committee
- Renewed the Laurentian University indigenous scholarship for $10K for second third- and fourth-year students.
- $10K donation to Inspire for student scholarships. (Bob Dodds mentioned that both the Dental Hygienists Association and the Ontario Energy Board have followed our lead and have donated money to Indspire.)
- Water First $10 K to train technicians to operate water treatment plants
- The committee’s focus has primarily but not exclusively been in the area of education and are looking for other ways to support Indigenous understanding and reconciliation apart from education.
New Generations
Information was covered by Ralf in the OREA announcement earlier in the meeting.
Golf Committee
Bob Miskelly, the golf committee chair, reminded members that RCOW and RCO both participate in organizing the golf tournament and the tournament is the largest fundraiser for both clubs.
He urged club members to continue to find Golfers Prizes and Sponsors for this year’s event on September 15.
Last year our tournament raised $35K for For4Life and we hope to raise even more for this year’s charity, Home Suite Hope.
Bob “modeled” the 100th anniversary golf shirt that is being sold to club members at cost, ($30) to help promote the event and Rotary. (It is available in both Men’s and Women’s versions.
George Vincent is visiting all the Oakville Rotary clubs to promote the sale.
Details on how to order and pay will be coming shortly.
President Mitch thanked all the committee and board chairs and the committee members for their work this year especially since the committee budgets were essentially doubled from the previous year.
Ralf Called for Happy Bucks and Fines
- Rod Craig is happy to be heading to Paris (the one in France)
- Reena Sandhu is happy that her daughter, Anjali, is working as nurse on a Mercy Ship.
- Mike Fisher is happy to be back after back packing in the Balkans and that he made his first sale as a travel counselor.
- Paul Bannon is happy that he had a hair cut.
- Shawn Feng is happy that his daughter has graduated from elementary school, that his business did well this year in a bad real estate market and that he and his family will be heading to China and Japan this summer.
- Adriana Sanchez is happy that her son, Andre, is celebrating his 21st birthday
- Nancy Eichenberg is happy as she attended a recent nursing alumni dinner
- Bob Dodds is not unhappy(?)
- Ralf is happy, he was told by Rob Galloway, District Governor Nominee Designate, that our Centennial Gala was one of the best Rotary events he attended, that Bali was mentioned in the in-Memoriam presentation at the district turnover meeting and that many of our club members volunteered at the Oakville Family Ribfest.
Upcoming Meetings
July 7 Turnover meeting
President Mitch closed the meeting at just after 8:00 pm with a toast to friends and Rotarians around the world
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