Date: February 5, 2025
Total attendance: 11 - 8 members and 3 guests, Suzanne Adamkowski of the Scarborough Rotary Club, Chris Musselman of the Uxbridge Rotary Club, and our guest speaker.
President Gordon started the meeting with the reading the Land Acknowledgment.
Anthem: Arthur Retnakaran
Toast to The King, Canada and Rotary
Michele Guy on the Calgary 2025 International Rotary Convention.
Basil Dias introduced our guest speaker. Michele is a Past President of the Toronto Rotary Club and was co-chair of the Toronto 2018 Rotary Convention. She spoke to the club about the R.I. International Convention in Calgary in June.
Michele gave us an insight into international conventions, having attended 14 during her time as a Rotarian. At these conventions, you will meet people just like us with the same goals to make the world a better place. You will be able to meet Rotarians from many other countries, discuss projects, and make connections. There are 100 Rotarians from our district registered so far for the Calgary convention. There will probably be 20,000 people attending the Calgary convention, the best number in the last 5 years. Early bird pricing is still in effect until the end of March.
Our members and guests shared their experiences with those present, including Basil who has attended 15 international conventions.
Michele explained that R.I. has 90 staff members to organize the convention, while the Calgary Rotary Clubs will be running the city events. For the Toronto convention, there were 1,200 local volunteers required, since there were events on every night for the attendees. Calgary should be similar.
Home hospitality has now been expanded to host hospitality. This allowed for 1,000 attendees to be hosted at the Toronto convention.
Michele urged all Rotarians to register for the Calgary International Convention, where our Canadian Dollar will go much further than at other international conventions.
Frank Allison thanked Michele for a very interesting and informative presentation.
Announcements:- Basil announced that he urgently needs volunteers to sort, pack and deliver gloves and hats to schools for the Warm Hands project. This project is usually completed in November, and this year we obtained a district grant, so we have to complete the project even though it’s late in the season.
- Rocco announced a Club Service Meeting for Monday, February 10th at Floga, and it was decided that this meeting would have the duel purpose of organizing the Warm Hands deliveries.
- Gerd delivered donations of $1,000 to President Gordon and says more donations are in the works.
S.A.A. Barry just asked for happy bucks and our guests, Suzanne and Chris, each put in $5.00 because they really enjoyed our club’s fellowship. Speaker Michele also contributed as did Arthur, perhaps as a penance for a joke he had told earlier in the meeting.
President Gordon then terminated the meeting.
