Our Club participated in two Club activities this month. We held our changeover party for Judy on the Edmonton Queen riverboat and we manned a water station for the Edmonton Marathon. They were both great opportunities for fellowship and participants reported that they were great fun.

 

Our associate Society, Stephens Hope for Mozambique was awarded charitable status by CRA. This enabled the Society to issue charitable receipts and opened up new opportunities for fundraising.

Thanks to Deb Jack for all her work and tenacity.

 

https://www.stevenshope.ca/

 

We were privileged to have Judy Toews speak to our group. Judy is the principal of Prince Charles school (Gary Smith’s school). Judy has native heritage and she talked about her school’s programs and partnerships with our indigenous community. It was an important and enlightening presentation.

 

This was the last month that our Club met virtually over Zoom.

   

We had our first, post covid, in person meeting on April 6 at the University Club.

Our speaker was Edmonton Public School Board Chair Trisha Estabrooks.  Trisha gave a very interesting and important presentation. She talked about;

Trisha is an articulate and passionate advocate for our schools and their students.

 

 

Judy Wilson assumed the presidency. We adopted our new monthly meeting schedule;

 

              - two in person meetings per month

              - one pub night and

              - board meeting

We gathered on the Edmonton Queen Riverboat to celebrate Judy’s Coronation.

Members of our Club met to plant trees on July 23.

On August 19 we gathered to man a water station at the Edmonton Marathon.

Then on Thursday Aug 29  Our Speaker this week was Janice Pinnock. Janice is a diversity education consultant with the Edmonton Public School board.  https://epsb.ca/ourdistrict/departments/diversity/

Janice talked about what it is like for a black person living in Edmonton and the challenges and biases they face. Janice engaged us in a discussion that helped us to be more aware of our own biases.

She gave a very valuable and enlightening presentation.

 

  

 

 

We congratulated our member Doug McEwan. He is celebrating 50 years as a Rotarian. Doug has never been just a "knife and fork" Rotarian. He has worked hard and contributed a lot to Rotary in every one of those years. 

 

 

 

We had the pleasure of hearing Shalina Sinha from the Edmonton Anti racism Committee.  She talked about the challenges of growing up as a brown skin girl in Alberta, her experience in Ireland and the role of the Anti Racism committee.

I encourage you to check out her website and listen to her Ted Talk at https://beinclusiv.com/

 

 

 

We bought out the theater for a presentation of Shadow Theater’s “The wrong people have money’ It was a fun evening and we raised some money for Stephen’s Hope.

Gary Smith advised that his schedule no longer permit them to attend our meetings and they resigned from out Club. Gary wasl valuable member and he will be missed.

 

 

 

Elizabeth Bonkink, oour immediately past president and the person who shepherded our club through the covid shutdowns announced that her new job and schedule would prevent her from continuing with our Club. elizabeth was a valueable member and she contributed her heart and soul to the Club. She will be missed. We wish her the very best in her future endeavors.

 

Our Christmas Party was held December 9.

 

Wednesday December 21 - - (Solstice!!) We had 2 assemblies on this day - the elementary students gather at 9:00 am for a 30 minute assembly and then at 12:45 after lunch the junior high students also have a 30 minute assembly.

 

Thursday December 22  Our regular club meeting with a jazzed up menu and something to jazz up your coffee! President's roses to be presented and a little history on that lovely practice.  We will have our seasonal fines collected to give to our server that day as well.