Malcolm Kennedy awarded Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal

Malcolm Kennedy was recently awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of his extensive and continuing work in the community. He has become a backbone of the Coquitlam Sunrise Club and has contributed considerable skill, time, effort and no doubt money to the TriCities area for the last 28 years.

Prior to volunteering his efforts in this area Malcolm was a very active member of the  Kinsmen in both Kamloops and Penticton. In Coquitlam he could be seen cooking up a storm in fundraising activities at the Como Lake Fishing Derby, the Blue Mountain Music Festival and countless  other events. He has been the Kinsmen’s president, director, registrar, and bulletin editor in addition to helping the Kinettes with fundraising applications.

Malcolm has been a long time director of the Festival Coquitlam and the Teddy Bear Picnic and Grande Parade have grown to become popular community events under his watch. He has also driven the Coquitlam parade float for ten years attending up to 18 parades as far away as Washington State and Alberta. Another of his many volunteer efforts has been to assist the CF Ride to Conquer by hauling the trailer of bikes and supplies from Banff to Vancouver as well as cooking for the riders at their stops.

In conjunction with Rotary Malcolm went to the Golden Triangle in Thailand during 2004, 2005 and 2006 to assist with hands-on building of facilities for orphaned or abandoned children and then set about engaging Rotary clubs throughout the world to sponsor and educate these children. The Rotary Club of Coquitlam was delighted to have Malcolm join the Club in 2007 where he has continued his busy beaver activities joining in many hands-on programmes from picking up trash in local parks, ringing the bells for the Salvation Army, packing Food Bank hampers to coordinating and encouraging the volunteers for Operation Red Nose. He has lent his many talents to serving as president, international director, weekly bulletin editor and has become the grant applicator extraordinaire helping the Club to raise funds for many projects at both home and overseas. His most recent escapade was to lead a team to Nicaragua for a hands-on project of building a school toilet block with flush toilets in addition to teaching English, art and sewing.