On the 10th of June we enjoyed our year end Rotating Wheel Dinner and recognized our accomplishments for the year ably MC'd by Eric Germain.
This year our club sponsored two Rotary Interact Clubs, on at J Percy Page High School and one at Elder Dr Francis Whiskeyjack High School. We heard from two representatives of each of these clubs about their activities over the past year. Our club also presents five Ron Dobbin Memorial Scholarships each year to deserving high school grads towards their higher education.
Each year our club raises funds in many different ways so that we can give it all away again. This year, locally, we donated funds to Stars Air Ambulance, Kids Kottage, Jasper Community Teams Society, Wellspring Cancer Support and ARCH Enterprises among others. Internationally we donated funds to KIVA Microfinance, Amarok Start with Mothers in Bangladesh and Mondesa Youth Opportunities in Namibia.
We then paid tribute to the loss of two of our long time members, Ron McCullough and Orville Sleen with a slide presentation and a fitting harmonica tune by Eric Germain.
Our out-going President Loida Lumanlan thanked us for the opportunities she had to increase her knowledge and skills as well as the confidence that she can give more to Rotary.
She then made check presentations of funds to Maggi Hegan from ARCH Enterprises and to Emily Lennstrom and Sae Shigeto from Wellspring Cancer Support. Two representatives from our Elder Dr Francis Whiskeyjack High School Interact Club, Tanya Singh and Ansh Sidhu, also made a presentation to Wellspring Cancer Support.
Our club then made several Paul Harris Presentations, to Vi Hughes for her service to the club as Bulletin Editor, to Sean McMurtry for his service to the club first as Secretary and then as Treasurer and lastly to Jim Hyrve from his wife Loida for his unwavering support for her and our club through the past year.
We then presented our Rotarian of the Year Award, which went to our newest member, Laura Brown for her enthusiastic help with whatever needed doing over the past year.
Our in-coming President Norman Leach then gave us a brief overview of his goals for our club over the next year.
Norman said that he truly believes we can do more and do it better if we do it together. He went on to thank several club members for their friendship that helped to make him and his family feel welcome in the Rotary family. He would like to introduce a Meeting with a Purpose to our club this year when we would get together to volunteer our time at various local charities once each month. He would also like us to have more chances in our regular meetings to get to know each other better through having two members say a few words about themselves at every second meeting.
He then introduced his new executive for the upcoming year, President Elect Eric Germain, Secretary Laura Brown, Treasurer Sean McMurtry, Membership Stephan Jansen van Vuuren, International Services Carin Jansen van Vuuren, Youth Services Chelsea Leach, and Directors at Large Donna Hutton and Ken Germain.