Program: Frank Parkhouse
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Doug Geddie |
Mary Margaret Murphy gave the blessing and Don Shaw lead O Canada.
President Rick welcomed all and introduced the head table: Wendy Southall, Frank Parkhouse, Sergeant-at-Arms Vicki Rudachuk, Rotarian in the Spotlight Mary Margaret Murphy and Doug Geddie, who introduced today’s guests.
Guests: Visiting Rotarian Shafee Bachus, Doug French with the guest speaker and Heidi Wilson, a guest of Judith Barker.
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Mary Margaret Murphy |
President Rick was quite proud of the fact that as a good boy scout he was prepared with an extra set of batteries. But it was all for naught, as they had to bring in a wired mike! So much for the boy scout motto. He also commented on the rather saint-like photo taken last week by Roger Segalin.
Rotarian in the Spotlight: Mary Margaret Murphy is a relatively new Rotarian who moved to St. Catharines to take the position as Branch Manager of Desjardins Credit Union. Doug Geddie pointed out that this credit union is a major sponsor of sport in Canada. As a fellow runner, Doug noted that Mary Margaret is an extremely competitive runne. She is on the Youth Leadership, Literacy and Charitable Trust committees.
Birthdays: Rob Reid celebrated his birthday on Dec. 4 th and was honoured with a resounding chorus of Happy Birthday.
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Rob Reid |
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Foster Zanutto |
Ron Sloan announced that there would be a short meeting of the Charitable Trust Committee immediately after today’s meeting.
Foster Zanutto, aka our club’s chief returning officer, reminded members that the ballots for the election of directors were distributed today. Four directors are to be elected and the polls close at the end of next week’s meeting. Results will be announced at the first meeting in January.
Rick Evans, Chair of the World Community Service Committee, provided background on the Dignitas/St. Michael's Hospital/Rotary AIDS Project in Malawi. RI is committed to raising $500,000 towards this project and to date has raised $400,000. This program is a rural based AIDS treatment and prevention program that serves 35,000 people each month. This project is headed by the same doctor who founded Doctors Without Borders. Moved by Rick Evans and seconded by Foster Zanutto that $5,000 be donated by the club to the Dignitas/St. Michael's Hospital/Rotary AIDS Project in Malawi. CARRIED
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Rick Evans |
Sam Walters introduced Oraine De Rosa who came through on her offer to make a $100 donation to the TV Auction in the name of the new Rotarian who brought in the highest dollar value of items to the auction. Terry Keller was the ‘winner’, bringing in $2,816 in items. Sam then said that instead of having a live-auction for the items that were not picked up by the purchasers, Rotarians can go on-line to see the items and then Sam an email to walters@niagara.com (or call Joyce or Sam with a phone in bid) for any of the remaining items.
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Sam Walters |
Items include: (Click on the link to take a look)
Oraine modeled the sunglasses, which actually looked perfect on her. Sam talked about some of the interesting statistics from the auction, specifically that 3 sets of Buffalo Sabres/Boston Bruins tickets valued at $80 each went for $180, $200 and $201. A set of Leafs tickets valued at $320 went for over $500 and a Wayne Gretzky print, valued at $40 sold for $46. Team 3’s items brought in the highest percentage of value (74.5%) and Team 5 raised the most money for the auction ($11,371). Thanks to Wade Stayzer for Meridian Credit Union’s donation of a lunch for members of the winning team.
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Terry Kellar, Bill Cole and Oraine De Rosa |
Larry Iggulden lead happy dollars with a joke about Christmas/police/horses. Quite convoluted but it actually worked.
George Darte read an inspiring e-mail about a Canadian soldier accompanying the body of a soldier killed recently in the war and the respect shown to him by the passengers on the plane. As a public thank you to our military men and women for what they are doing, there is a movement growing in Canada called Red Fridays. By wearing red on Fridays Canadians who support our troops are showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect.
John Snowling thanked Joyce for sending out gentle reminders to Rotarians who miss the weekly meetings. The reminders are also to ask Rotarians that when they do a makeup for the missed meeting to be sure to notify Joyce for which missed meeting the makeup is to be used. He also said that our attendance in November was 77%.
Norm Kreger is off yet again to Jamaica and thanked Mike Pihura for the donation of hearing aids. He is also taking children’s books and medical supplies, which were provided by Not Just Tourists.
Rick Vanderkuip thanked members for their support of the ice-wine project.
Rob Reid thanked Doug Geddie for reminding him to bring his birthday bucks and also was thankful that he is still younger than the number of years Gerry Wooll has been a member of the club.
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Oraine De Rosa |
Oraine De Rosa just returned from visiting her 85 yr old aunt and 95 yr old uncle. Her aunt just won a senior’s award for lifetime achievement with the Eastern Star. She also did an on-line makeup from an RI European site and learned that there are 1 billion people worldwide who are illiterate of which 2/3rds are women.
John Nitsopolous reminded members that he is renovating his property and has chairs, curtains and other items available at extremely reasonable prices. (Roger Segalin made the announcement for him as he wasn't at the meeting).
Eugene Gillies was thankful to be back and thanked everyone for their support and also for the card. However, he was hopeful that George Darte’s ‘hope to see you soon’ was meant on a personal as opposed to a professional basis.
Jacquelyn Bradshaw was very happy that she sold her house and that she is a new partner with Edward Jones.
Shafee Bachus was pleased to be a visiting Rotarian.
Ray Bukovec enjoyed Larry’s joke and made some reference to how the other Larry would have said it. Enough said!
50/50 DRAW
No luck this week for Scott Heelis who drew the 9 of clubs. The pot now stands at over $900 and the deadline is approaching for holiday shopping.
Wendy Southall introduced retired NRP Deputy Chief Frank Parkhouse who is a board member of the Child Advocacy Centre.
Frank started his presentation by relating statistics that 1 in 4 females and 1 in 5 males are sexually assaulted by the time they are 18. Each year FACS responds to more than 6,000 allegations of child abuse.
The Child Advocacy Centre is dedicated to minimizing the trauma to children who are victims of abuse. It will be a single place where a comprehensive multi-disciplinary team can investigate allegations of physical or sexual abuse. This program is modeled after a very successful program in the States. The CAC is a regional centre, which just happens to be located in St. Catharines. Frank noted that St. Catharines, on a per capita basis, is not the municipality in Niagara with the highest rate of child abuse.
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Currently a child who is a victim of abuse could repeat their story up to 7 times to different agencies. The CAC will eliminate that type of intervention. The new centre will be child friendly and the services will come to the centre. The Niagara Regional Police and Family and Childrens Services are partners in the centre and their staff currently dealing with these issues will be assigned to the CAC. These agencies will also be covering the cost of their respective staff for their work at the CAC.
The new centre is located at 8 Forrester St (near Geneva and Vine). It is a homelike setting and they anticipate taking occupancy in the summer of 2007. Their goal is to raise $750,000 ($550,000 for the property and $200,000 for the renovations) and to date have raised $202,000. Debbie Zimmerman is the campaign chair and Chief Wendy Southall is the honourary chair.
They are seeking operating funding from a variety of sources.
Liz Palmieri thanked the speaker and President Rick presented our club’s thank you donation to a RI literary project in honour of the speaker.
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Frank Parkhouse and Rick Merritt
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President Jack Lightstone – Brock University
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