Lunch Meeting December 2, 2025
Diane Macdonald
Call to Order: About 45 Club members and their guests were signed in to the meeting by Ann Haessel and Bill Redmond, greeted at the door by Ralph Lundberg/ Diana Aspe Ayers, and convinced to buy 50/50 tickets by Trevor Axworthy. After President Bill called the meeting to order, Michael Pierson led us in O Canada and Bruce Fenwick provided a thoughtful invocation speaking about the Christmas season and the pride that Rotarians can feel in what we do to improve our community, both local and global. He also challenged us to think about ways we could increase our impact.
Club Business: After eating our lunch and enjoying fellowship around the table, we moved on to Happy Bucks: Doug Webb told us that he saw his daughter off on a three month trip to east Asia where she is having a great time and showing a noticeable increase in confidence and independence. Manon Mitchell recounted her challenge for each Club in District 5360 to increase their membership in this, her year as District Governor. She was excited to report that District membership has gone from 1,433 to 1,516 in the past few months. Barb Young proudly reported that her grandson has graduated from the Kananaskis firefighter program.
Doug Webb took the microphone to let us know that Nominations for the election of Directors of the Club for the 2026-2027 year may be made to the Secretary of the Club (Laurene Wilson) until 12:00 noon on December 16th, our second regular meeting of the Club in December. The Directors of Early Childhood Literacy, Membership, Fellowship, Community Service and International Service will have fulfilled their two years on the Board and are due to be replaced. He promised that it would be a fun year to be involved.
George Brookman gave a very succinct appeal: $300 from each member for the Christmas Hamper Program. To date there have been 53 donations: 41 from Rotarians, 12 from Non-Rotarians. Deliveries of the Hampers start on December 11th, so funds are required before then – they may be sent to George or Jo-Ann Clark.
Barb Young gave a report on the Youth Exchange Program. Our exchange student, Valentin Frauenknecht, is attending Henry Wise Wood High School which is in a location that makes it difficult for him to get to our lunch meetings. He was recently on a trip to the Stettler Rotary Club which arranged for all the students to attend the Polar Express train ride in matching Christmas PJs – fun! Valentin will be moving to Kurt and Manon’s place shortly.
Barb also spoke about the short term Summer Exchange for students of high school age. Each student would spend a month with a family in another country; then the student from that family would come back and spend a month with the local student’s family. For more information, contact Barb.
For those who haven’t yet seen it, be sure to check out the YouTube video of our member Peter Harrison being interviewed by RI, talking about why he became a Rotarian.
Guest Speaker: Next, it was time for our guest speaker, Janis Goldie, who is President and CEO of Alberta University of the Arts. Janis spoke about both the history and the future of the School which is a specialized public university dealing with art, craft and design. It encompasses 17 different disciplines including glass blowing which is of special interest to many. The students are immersed in hands-on learning taught by many world-renowned artists including some graduates of the school who come back to teach the next generation.
AUA dates back to 1926, when it was part of SAIT. In 1960 it became Alberta College of Art, also under SAIT; then in 1995 the name was changed to Alberta College of Art and Design. In 2019, the government of Alberta granted the organization University status and it adopted its current name.
At this point, AUA has 1250 students in small classes, approximately 14,000 alumni, and distributes $400,000 in scholarships bursaries and awards annually.
Janis emphasized that they want to serve the public as well as their students so they have a gallery which is open to the public and displays student art. They have a show and sale each year and they offer personal interest classes for all ages of Calgarians including teen courses and kids camps in the summer. She spoke of the positive impact on Calgary by contributing to our visual culture and nurturing future generations of thinkers and makers.
Janis was thanked by Maxine Morrison and presented with our certificate showing our contribution to Wellspring on her behalf.
Closing: The winning 50/50 ticket was held by Bill Redmond, who pulled a yellow ball out of the bag and went home without a share of the $1,209 currently in the kitty.
We repeated the Four Way Test, toasted Rotary and the meeting was adjourned by President Bill.
Next Meeting – December 16 – Palliser Speaker: Dr. Terry Clark, Director, MRU Conservatory Director Topic: the Conservatory’s rich history and how that has shaped its distinctive role in both the local community and across Canada today along with a Conservatory student performance. |
