“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times”. That quote seems to fit year 13 of our Club. We had a reasonably successful Ribfest (not the banner year experienced the year before, but good). We had a disaster with our new fundraising attempt - “Oktoberfest”. Nobody came and, as a consequence, the club lost over $16,000 on the project.
The strength of our Club is in the dedication of our members to do good work.
First of all the dedicated Board members for 2003-04 were:
· Past-President – Ross Irvine
· President-Elect – Robert White,
· Secretary – Laurie Lantaigne,
· Treasurer (July to December) – Jim Gray; (January – June) - Barbara Fisk
· Club Service - Barb Bent
· Community Service – Candy Clark
· Vocational Service - Jamie Pritchard
· International Service – Wayne Hong.
Highlights of the Year:
International Service
Foundation – We became a sustaining club ($US100 per member), one of a handful in the District
Polio Plus – in the previous year, our club responded to the request for $100 per member for 3 years to eradicate polio by 2005 and we committed $6000 for three years. This year we were able to fulfill the first 2 payments.
Vocational Service
Fred Black Scholarship – we went from 1 scholarship of $1000 to 6 at $500 – one for each high school in the city.
Camp Enterprise – we sent a record number of students from Guelph to the program.
We started one new vocational project - $1000 scholarship to the co-op program at U of G.
Community Service
In 2003-04, we had the good fortune to have a record amount of funds from Ribfest to allocate. As a result we were able to support 14 organizations to the tune of $22,000. Thanks to Candy Clark who did a lot of work to collect the funding applications, copy and distribute them to the funding committee and process all of the evaluations to come up with a recommendation for the Board to consider.
Ribfest – We had a great event in 2003. There were lots of improvements – like Pedro Bevelander’s ‘Change for Charity’ initiative. 2004 was shaping up to been even better. Sponsorships, both cash and in-kind, were up by over 50% from the previous year - that along with a number of planned improvements boded well for the 2004 event. (As it turned out, 2004 Ribfest became known as Rainfest – however, the extra sponsorships helped to ensure we had a positive bottom line in the end.)
Kurtimah family – every so often something comes along to make it all seem extra special –the highlight of the year for me was the Kurtimah family. Thanks to Sonia Spekkens who brought the idea to the Board that we make them our Christmas family – little did I know at the time what a profound decision that would be. That’s what Rotary is all about. Every Rotarian has a defining moment and that was it for me.
Maneesh Jain organized two PYHO work parties to help the family with their new home and Larry Henderson provided many hours, equipment and skills fixing up the house and the yard.
Club Service
One of my objectives was to have fun and to grow the sense of Family within Rotary
In 2003-04 we had a number of excellent fellowship events, namely:
- Labatts Baseball Outing
- Ribfest Kickoff
- 2 Euchre Nights
- Family Snow Carnival (at Mike and Laura’s)
- Niagara Wine Tour
- Dragonboat Entry
- Charter Night
- Christmas Party
- Landmines Dinner
Members Lost/New Members Gained
In 2003-04, we lost 10 members, gained 4 new members. One of most notable was the resignation of Jim Gray both as Club Treasurer and as a member. Jim passed away in September, 2004.
Publicity – Elizabeth Lambden took on this task and, for the first time in a long while, we got some well deserved press coverage.
Also in 2003-04 we had three nominees for Women of Distinction – Francine Dore, Patsy Marshall and Judy Folkard (Bruce’s wife). Also, Liz Fisk was Chairperson of the event.
A Centennial Project was chosen. Hopewell Homes – Schnoozlen Room in the Shelldale Centre. The 4 Guelph clubs will take on the project together. It will be an opportunity to work with our fellow Rotarians in other clubs as we go about raising the funds for this project.
At Charter Night, two fellow Rotarians were honored with a Paul Harris Fellow – Jack Tacoma and Bruce Macpherson.
In closing, my thought for the day on my final day as President – There is no I in Rotary. Rotarians work together as a team to do good things in an atmosphere of camaraderie and good fun.
