On Friday the 10th we at last attended a meeting of the members who were available for a more normal lunch format, and, further, the room was specially available for just the Club members who were able to find their way to a location that necessitates a car-ride: it was almost a welcome return to normality. We were also able to enjoy an erudite classification speech by Elena.
In the view of your learned correspondent, the Classification speech is a feature of Rotary life that is almost going the way off the dodo, but is a feature that should be utilized far more frequently. With few exceptions, membership of Rotary more or less implies the ability to ‘get a message across’; certainly our founding fathers had that fact in mind when the principles of Rotary were first enunciated. And to have a speech once upon entry (mine was presented in 1982) would seem to be rather too little of a good thing: on this day we enjoyed something not heard for almost 2 years!
We therefore heard from an august member, who has actually been a Rotarian for 6 years. As a first generation Canadian, with experience at the Sorbonne and the Université de Tours, she graduated from the University of Western Ontario and for the last 30 years has been able to study and work in 5 other countries. She has enjoyed a progressive career pattern in the hospitality, educational and non-profit sectors and is pleased to operate under the rubric “Lead by Example”. Notably, she has enthusiastically embraced leadership roles in a number of institutions, including the Ladner Rotary Board, though she characterizes herself as an Entrepreneur at Heart, and is presently engaged in working with a "start-up” in the aviation industry.
The closing words of Elena’s address are instructive. Though penned by Steve Jobs, they are a signal entrée into Rotary and a fruitful life: “ … Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people."