Rotary Lunch Meeting August 11, 2026
Diane Macdonald
Forty-five members and their guests gathered in the lovely Crystal Ballroom for a very nice buffet meal (including dessert!); Michael Pierson on the piano led us in O Canada and Madeleine King offered a fitting Rotary invocation.
President Doug Webb introduced our several guests and thanked our front of house volunteers – Dorothy Loucks, Ann Haessel and Franco Savoia. There were some very happy “Happy Bucks”, including a photo of Peter and Liz Harrison’s brand new son, Ambrose.
Michael Broadhurst sadly announced that his very good friend John Phillips, a previous member of this Club, had recently passed away in Toronto. Michael also announced the current Birthdays.
President Doug let us know that the recent Club survey that was done has been reviewed and that, overall, members are pretty happy with the Club. The Board is looking at what the members are asking for and what we, as a Club, want to take on this year. A link to the survey results will be sent out to all members.
Emery Varga spoke about a fundraiser coming up on September 23rd for the Adopt- A- Village initiative, which has started in Uganda. The fundraiser will feature presentations including a video by Rick Castiglione and speakers talking about the success of the villages that we have supported to date. We are encouraged to buy a ticket for ourselves and two for others. Registration is now open on the Club website. (see following article with link).
Joe Fras introduced our guest speaker, Mark Berry, who is a Rotarian and a Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon. Since 2014, Mark has been pursuing his passion of training surgeons in developing countries where there is a huge unmet need. Prior to that, he went to third world countries to do surgery on children with a variety of orthopedic conditions. He decided that an extension of the old adage “Give a man a fish and he eats today; teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life” had real-world surgical implications. He set up a program with the help of Rotary Vocational Training grants. He sent multiple volunteer experts (often recently retired surgeons from North America and Europe) to Tanzania over 1 to 3 years to train local surgeons to be pediatric orthopedic surgeons. They worked in three domains: education, surgical skills and leadership. Over half the population of Tanzania is under 17 years of age, so the need is great. Tanzania now has three accredited surgical fellows who have in turn trained three of their own in this specialty field. Because they have been trained in-country, the likelihood of workforce loss to other countries is much less than if they had left their country to train. Mark has programs currently operating in Uganda and Rwanda as well as Tanzania – and Nairobi, Kenya is soon to be added to the list.
He showed us several slides of children from Tanzania before and after procedures to correct some horrendous deformities – it was a visual teaching of what a tremendous difference the surgery would make in the life of each of those children.
Mark was thanked by Joe with our traditional certificate and a donation to Wellspring. (Picture shows Joe Fras thanking Dr. Mark Berry, with President Doug Webb).
Doug’s Club History minute focused on James Wheeler Davidson and his contribution to Rotary and our Club. He then presented Service Above Self awards to Gord Graham (for all his work on Club BBQs), Catherine Scheers (for what she does to strengthen our ties with the University of Calgary) and Dave and Diane Macdonald (for helping make our BBQs happen).
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, August 25th. The guest speaker will be Gerry Darichuk, speaking about his Humanitarian Mission to Ukraine.
