MEETING RECAP - 2nd Meeting of 2019 January 28th
Submitted by Will Arscott
Speaker was Stephanie Rusu about Heart and Stroke.
It was our first regular meeting back at the Delta Bessborough in quite some time (more than one month). It was a regular format meeting with a guest speaker. The meeting was presided by President Paul Gauthier.
Greeter Dave Sundby
Cashier Avis Hardy / Linda Petrow
Visitors and Guests Jack Brodsky
Grace Al Morton
Set-up Al Morton
O Canada was fairly strong even with the absence of Wayne McGillivray. Most of our members remembered the new words. This was followed by an appropriate grace to the God of each of our own understanding.
Visitors and Guests were introduced by Jack Brodsky
Stephanie Rusu who is the daughter of Gary Rusu and the Guest Speaker
Donna Gauthier- wife of President Paul
Also our new member Parm Sharma had his young son at the meeting
Announcements
Sergeant’s tickets are for sale. The Board has decided that the purchase of these tickets will go to the Trust Fund and will be receipted as charitable gifts. This will give our members reason to be even more generous with their happy and sad dollars.
Two Rotary related social events have taken place since our last meeting: On Wednesday, January 16th there was a gathering at Sports on Tap with 15 or so Rotarians present. On Friday January 18th 40 or so Rotarians made their way to the Blades game for their ‘Super Hero’s Night.’ We were represented in the ceremony by Vic Dubois. Watch for the announcement of a Social Event on February 11th. More details are coming soon.
There will be an important meeting of the President’s Council of Tuesday, February 19th at the Saskatoon Club. Incoming District Governor Fred Wright and Gail Anderson (District Governor 20-21) will be attending to discuss the District’s Strategic Plan. The meeting is for presidents and incoming presidents and all that attended the Strategic Planning session on September 15th. If you have an interest you would be welcome. Please let President Paul know.
The five Rotary clubs are undertaking a joint New Citizen Ceremony. The tentative date of May 13th has been set. It will be an evening function at the Travelodge. These ceremonies have been a project of the Nutana club for some time. Generally it is expected that the sponsor will pay for the new Canadian and one guest. This is a cost of $50 per inductee based on a meal at $25. How many inductees does our club wish to sponsor? Gary Rusu and Peter Zakreski have already paid for five inductees. Please come forward if you are interested in sponsoring one or more inductees and a guest.
At the last President’s Council a discussion was held about strengthening the relationship between Rotary and the high schools in Saskatoon. The high schools have been assigned among the five clubs. Our club is responsible for reaching out to three schools - Bishop James Mahoney, E.D. Feehan, and Tommy Douglas. All of our schools are already RAP schools. We are to contact these schools to make the programs of Rotary known. The programs we want to promote include AIT: AIAG, Student Short-Term Exchange, and Ryla. Some of this could be done by educating our RAP workers and having them explain and promote the above programs. Should we also be developing an orientation package?
The Rotary Club of Saskatoon North is undertaking a clean-up of Rotary Park on Saturday, May 11th. They would welcome participation from all the clubs. A show of hands indicated there are a lot of our members who would be willing to participate. The number of members who indicated they would help will be passed on to Brenda Banbury so the MVA can set an appropriate clean-up area.
There will be a World Community Service meeting on Wednesday, January 30th at 6:30 pm at the Saskatoon Club. [In a blatant act of self-promotion Dave Sundby used this announcement to point our attention to the honey he had for sale at $10 a jar. If we still had a sergeant it would have provided an excellent pretext to raise money for the projects of Rotary.]
Happy and Sad
H Jack Brodsky for his recent two weeks in Hawaii.
H Steve Wilson for so many of our members showing up on a very cold Monday.
H Parm Sharma for having his young son at the meeting.
H Dave Sundby for being able to attend a game at the new Merlis Belsher arena and seeing what a great facility it is in action.
H Gary Emde for his time in Puerto Vallarta
H Gary Rusu for having his daughter as our guest speaker and for his upcoming trip to Cuba.
HEART AND STROKE - Stephanie Rusu
Stephanie was introduced by our new member Linda Petrow. Stephanie grew up and attended school in Saskatoon. She has had several jobs and is glad to be back in health care advocacy. Stephanie started with Heart and Stroke this September.
Heart and Stroke was previously known as the Heart and Stroke Foundation but Foundation was dropped in a recent re-branding. Stephanie introduced the new logo. The Foundation was started sixty years ago by a group of cardiologists’ wives to raise money for education and research. Today it has some five hundred employees and 1.5 million donors. With the re-branding comes a new strategy of working online and through social media. To date 1.5 billion has been raised in research funding.
In Canada someone dies of a heart attack or stroke every seven minutes. The organization has a vision of lives uninterrupted by heart disease or stroke. It has a mission to prevent heart attacks and strokes and to enhance recovery when they do occur.
Currently a lot of groundbreaking research is being funded. Some very important work is being done in Calgary and at RUH in Saskatoon to find interventions to dissolve blood clots.
In her presentation Stephanie concentrated on initiatives in Saskatchewan in the area of strokes.
There are 62,000 strokes every year in Canada and 1,000 of these occur in Saskatchewan. A stroke is where the blood supply to the brain is interrupted and brain tissue begins to die. When this happens time is critical.
Stephanie is proud to be working with Dr. Michael Kelly at the RUH. His work is to change the systems in the province to obtain better outcomes for stroke victims. The new initiative is built around seven stroke centers in the province. These centers are integrated into the 9-1-1 system so that suspected stroke victim is directed to one of these centers. This is why it is very important to call 9-1-1 if you suspect a stroke because they will have the ambulance by-pass facilities that are not part of the stroke protocol system. The facilities that are part of the stroke protocol system have the resources set in place to receive a person experiencing a stroke. In the case of a stroke, time is of the utmost concern. Saskatchewan is still challenged for managing strokes because of the rural nature of the province and the distances involved.
Most people do not know the signs of a stroke. We were taken through the ‘FAST’ signs:
Face: may droop on one side or on both sides.
Arms: check to see if the person can lift both arms above their head.
Speech: can be slurred or jumbled. In extreme cases aphasia (loss of speech) may occur.
Time: call 9-1-1 NOW and NO don’t drive yourself to the hospital. It cannot be overemphasized that time is critical. All people including children need to know these signs.
Heart and Stroke has introduced an education plan for the the province to educate about the FAST signs and stroke management. We saw pictures of our premier and health minister wearing red Heart and Stroke ball-caps.
[Editor’s note: It easy to find a large supply of similar red ball-caps with MAGA printed on the front. In this case MAGA would stand for “Make Angina Go Away.”]
President Paul thanked Stephanie and announced our usual donation to Bethany Homes.
Adjournment
