Message from our July 10, 2014 Meeting

Posted 
on Jul 10, 2014
 

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Notes from today's meeting:

  • Our special guests today were District Governor Brian Thompson and Mary Lou Harrison.
  • After introducing our guests, Club President for the Quarter Carole mentioned that she had hard copies of the minutes available from our board meeting this week for anybody wishing them.  Copies of the minutes were also emailed to club members by Carole.  As Carole is now using ClubRunner to email, please ensure that your email address on ClubRunner is current!  (If your email is not current, you're likely not receiving these notes anyway.) The board minutes included:
    • Planning and goals discussed for the 2014-2015 year
    • Some Leadership roles required
    • Treasurer's report with a listing of last year's charitable givings
    • Granting guidelines as approved for the 2014-2015 year
    • A summary of past, current and possible new service projects.
  • Mary Lou Harrison introduced our guest speaker, DG Brian Thompson. Brian is looking forward to visiting the 54 clubs in our District 7070 - a far easier task than some of his fellow DGs have - one DG has 6 countries to visit with several languages to manage and a conflict on top of that. Brian gave us a bit of background on the 2 year District Governor training experience he recently went through, the notion that he is at the top of the roller coaster, and the fact that he will be fired a year from now.  Brian spoke about the impact of Rotary on his life and quizzed us on some Rotary stats such as number of clubs (34,000) and members worldwide (1.2 million), number of countries with active rotary clubs (over 200), and the amount of money (~$23.00) used to seed the Rotary Foundation.  Part of Brian's presentation included a video from RI President Gary Huang in which he speaks about a lesson from Confucius that "it is better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness. President Huang's theme for the year is "Light Up Rotary".  Closer to home, borrowing from Bond, DG Brian's District 7070 theme is "Shaken and Stirred".  

ImageBrian invites us to be Shaken and Stirred at the District 7070 Conference at the Weston Prince Hotel in Toronto October 24-26, 2014.  Carole thanked Brian with our now customary donation to the Nature Centre and to Polio Eradication.

  • We are trying something new this year.  The Parkdale - High Park club presidency is going to be shared over the coming year by 4 past presidents on a quarterly rotation.  Pictured below with DG Brian Thompson are our 4 quarterly club presidents for the year: L-R: Robin, Don, DG Brian, Carole and Scott. 

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  • Happy bucks came from Danielle for her baby boy to be born early in January as well as from Carole, Scott and Robin for Danielle's news.
  • Robin won the draw but not the pot!
  • After the meeting, some of us met with DG Brian and Mary Lou to get to chat about the year ahead.
  • And that's it for now.