Submitted by Will Arscott 

 

 

It was a good turn-out in the William Pascoe Room of the Bessborough. At least one additional table had to be set up. Thanks to all the members who were there, the meetings are always better when they are well attended. 

 

President Vic acted as greeter and the Master of Ceremonies duties was well handled by Steven Wilson. Steve seems to take his turn at most of the duties in our club. It is always good to see a variety of our members at the podium. In the future we could consider having President Vic MC a meeting if we could teach him to enunciate more clearly.

 

Greeter was President Vic.

Cashier was Wayne Storozuk.

Visitors and Guests introduced by Mike LeClaire.

Members sang the Rotary Grace.

Set-up  and take down completed by Al Morton and Wayne McGillivray (Al noted in the Rotary Archives that the mention of the first female member of our club dated back to 1980). When you get to our meeting it is worthwhile to take time to look at the material Al has set out, you can learn a lot about our club.

 

The meeting opened with the singing of ‘O Canada’ and Rotary grace. This was led with the usual gusto by Wayne McGillivray. Wayne’s obvious talent in this regard was acknowledged later in the meeting by our guest speaker.

 

 

 

Nora Yates - Executive Director of the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan and our guest speaker.

 

Don Ravis - Who is an old friend of our club. He is a board member of the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency and accompanied Nora to our meeting. It was good to see Don.

 

John and Julia and son John Mark Davies. John would be honoured later in the meeting with a lifetime membership in our club.

 

Lorna Pike - a visiting Rotarian from the St. John’s NFLD. North-West club. Welcome to Saskatoon just before freeze-up.

 

Jasmine Brown - guest of Wayne Palmer.

Donna Gauthier - please see Donna for all your grocery card needs. There have been several large Xmas orders (>$10,000). We are now out of Co-op Cards and will get more in the New Year. More Sobeys’s cards are on their way. Please let Donna know if you will be requesting a large number of cards. As the holiday season begins to approach please see Donna and get your cards for your entertaining needs.

 

 

 

The Enchanted Forest project is underway. The first walking night was particularly successful with the mild weather. Again this year, the two principals will be Dave Sundby and Steve Wilson. The list of assistants is beginning to fill up but is still not completed. The sheet was going around the meeting and members were asked to take an available spot to help Steve or Dave. If you missed the sign-up please contact Dave and he will find a night for you to help.   Being an assistant is not hard work and Steve and Dave are great guys and easy to work with.

 

Paul Gauthier talked about the Rotary Foundation. Some money has come in but we need another $500 to $600 to secure our grant eligibility for another year. Please consider helping out.  You should have received an email last week summarizing your donations. In the last few week of 2019 it would be a great time to upgrade your donation status. Paul can email you a contribution form and you can return it at a meeting before Christmas.

 

 

There will be a World Community Service Committee meeting on November 19^th (Tuesday) at 6:00 pm at Peter Zakreski’s residence. All are welcome.

 

Our annual Christmas luncheon will be on Monday, December 16^th. As usual Santa Claus has cleared his schedule to make our date and will bring presents for those twelve and under who are attending. The presents are being organized by Linda Petrow and Wendy Cooper. If you are bringing guests of the appropriate age please give this information to Linda or Wendy. Above all we do not want to embarrass Santa by having him miss one of our young guests.

 

The KG Christmas Market is a go. It will be held on the Tuesday, December 17^th. Set up will take place after our Christmas Luncheon (Dec 16^th). Volunteers are needed for set-up (following our luncheon), the market itself and the take-down after the market. Sign-up sheets were on the tables. As in previous years, the event is being coordinated by Joanne and Avis. Please collect your donations and get them to Joanne or Avis. The school will only accept delivery of these donations before 8:30 and after 3:30. There is always a shortage of gifts for men so please keep this in mind and help as much as you can.

 

Next Meeting will be held on December 2^nd. The subject is the Canada games and our speaker will be Paul Jaspar. The meeting will be held at the Saskatoon Club.

 

 

 

 

H         Vic Dubois for sports events and other things the scribe did not catch. Thanks Vic.

 

H&S    Wayne McGillivray for ‘Riders who after all had a better season than might have been expected during the Exhibition season. Happy that he did not have to spend $1,000 to go to Grey Cup. Also happy for the Huskies who won two dirty games against the Bisons.   Later he also put in a happy dollar for John Davies’ long-time contribution to our club.

 

H         Gary Rusu for a better than expected Roughrider season. Also happy for the Rotary Foundation. Gary hopes that the members will step up and meet the threshold of giving so that we can qualify for Rotary grants as we have in the past to fund several of our projects.

 

H         Peter Volding for his son graduating from the U of S with distinction at the recent convocation.

 

 

 

The club presented a well-deserved lifetime membership award to our long-term member John Davies. John was joined at the meeting by his wife Julia and son John Mark. John has now moved from his house on Garrison Crescent but continues to enjoy his summers at Lake of the Woods. John is a Paul Harris fellow.

 

Rotary was a good fit for John as he has an interest in international service. This passion has led him to live in several foreign countries including Ethiopia. In recent years he has been able to visit a daughter in Mongolia.

 

John’s background is working as a geologist in the mining industry. He worked for Saskatchewan mining when he was sponsored into our club by Stan Hodgins in 1981. He served as our secretary for an extended period during which he left the mining industry and attended theological school to become an Anglican Minister. John worked as a hospital padre from 1990 and still does when there is a shortage of available clergy.

 

John has participated in many aspects of our club. The bridge foursome of John Davies, Gord Menuz, Kevin Wilson and Merv McKee comes to mind. [Editor’s Note: I along with Gary Kerr had the pleasure of joining John on the Bedford Road RAP committee when we still had Rotary committees in the RAP schools. John always attended, was always interested and asked great questions. I know I speak for Gary in saying we always welcomed John’s contributions.]

 

John spoke briefly about how important Rotary and our club have been in his life. Rotary helped him through some difficult times when, shortly after joining, he lost his job in the downsizing of the Saskatchewan Mining Corporation. This meant taking a job with the Ontario agency and spending significant time living in Ontario. John kept up with Rotary through this period. Later he served as club secretary while a divinity student.

 

John told a great story about how being a Rotarian helped get his luggage out of a locked terminal in the Barbados and how he was able to inspect a water project our club had sponsored on St. Vincent.

Steve Wilson presented a lifetime membership plaque to John. It is everyone’s hope that John will remain healthy and active for many years to come.

 

           

 

Nora Yates, the CEO of the new (2019) Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan, was introduced by Linda Petrow. Nora is a Commerce graduate of the University of Saskatchewan. She has qualified for a professional designation in charitable fundraising. She lives in Regina where she is a member of the Regina Rotary club for the past five years.

 

Nora began by introducing Don Ravis a member of the board of the Saskatchewan Cancer Authority. She also brought greetings from our own member Bill Edwards with whom she had shared breakfast.

 

The Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan is a new entity and is not part of the Canadian Cancer Society. It is one of about 85,000 Canadian charities and one of about 700 cancer charities in Canada.

 

At this point, rather than this scribe summarizing Nora’s excellent presentation the scribe would like to point the reader to Nora’s handout attached to this bulletin. Her presentation followed by her handout presents the information far better than the scribe. It really is worth taking some time reading this material as we are all effected by cancer in our province.

 

Nora was thanked by Steve Wilson and the regular donation will be made to Bethany Homes on her behalf.