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Opening and Introductions:
New President Tom Arkell opened the meeting.
Grace was said by Wendy Southall, followed by O Canada, with a note from Don Shaw, followed by a toast to Her Majesty the Queen and Canada.
The head table was introduced including speaker introducer John Lehnen, speaker Mary Margaret Murphy, President tom, Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Williams, Rotarian in the spotlight Art Wing, and Blair Pollard, who introduced our guests:
Cindy Mewhinney and Kithio Mwanzia, guests of Walter Sendzik
Blaine MacDougall – guest of Vicky Rudachuk.
Birthdays:
July 12 - Ken Taylor and Jim Hanson (twins?) Ken was present and was duly serenaded by the club
Announcements:
Liz Palmieri advised that the sign-up sheets for Ribfest volunteers are now out at each meeting. Ribfest takes place this year from August 3 rd to 6 th (the August long weekend). There are 272 spots which must be filled by volunteers, from ticket sellers, to beer pourers, security, cash counters etc. Please note that only Rotarians, family members, and trusted friends are able to volunteer. If you can, please sign up for more than one shift! It is a great weekend!
Norma Medulun announced that she is still working on getting police clearance for members. If you have not already completed your questionnaire, please pick one up by the mailbox outside the meetings. If you have completed one, you must pick up your own report from the police station (with 2 pieces of ID), and bring it back to Norma.
Judith Barker announced, on behalf of Kelly Buckley, chair of the Youth Exchange Committee, that we are desperately in need of host families for our incoming exchange student from Japan (male). If you think you can help out, talk to Pat Rooney or Rick Evans or Rob Reid to find out about their own experiences as host families for some insight. Please contact Kelly or Judith.
Patricia Rooney announced that, as in previous years, we will be having a full page spread in The Standard to recognize the “Friends of Ribfest” who paid $500 as sponsors. In order to pay for the page, the club offers members the opportunity to have a business card size ad on the page as well. Cost is $100. There were (and will be) flyers and sign up sheets on the tables at the meetings.
President Tom then asked Art Wing to speak about his recent experiences in Bulgaria , where he spoke at the inauguration of a new Rotary district 2482 in Bulgaria . Our own World Community Service Committee gave Art $500 which he converted to US Dollars. He presented three gifts in Bulgaria :
- $100 to the President of the Rotaract Club of Plovdiv , Bulgaria for use in their Literacy project with an elementary school in Bulgaria . The presentation was made at he Rotaract Club's 12 th birthday party dinner on June 30.
- $200 was presented to the President of the Rotary Club of Plovidv-Paldin, which is the home club of the new District Governor, Nasko Nachev. The money will augment funds for their new Rotary Park being built in an area of apartment buildings serving about 80,000 people in southern Plovdiv . This presentation was made at the dinner celebrating the new Rotary district on July 1 st . Art was presented with an honourary membership.
- $200 has been forwarded to the Rotary Club of Samakov in the Borovets ski resort area. The club is working with a local hospital in terms of equipment and medicinal needs. They have an arrangement with a pharmaceutical company in Germany that is helping with providing medicine at little or no cost.
In addition, Art has been working with our District Group Study Exchange (GSE) team to have next year's GSE between our District and District 2482, which will be their inaugural GSE. The focus of the GSE will be on Tourism (hotels, attractions, wineries etc.). District 7090 team from Canada and the US will go to Bulgaria May 4 th to 31 st . The District 2482 team from Bulgaria will visit here May 10 th to June 7th.
Art then thanked the WCS Committee for the opportunity to represent our club in support of 3 separate Rotary related projects in Bulgaria .
Happy $:
Liz Palmieri carried the Happy Basket today. She was happy to have just returned from two weeks in Tobermory, which was wonderful, but she returned to find her cat had a broken tail. It is now a stump! (Editor's note: I once had a Manx cat like that, but that was normal for him. Just tell people he is a Manx). Liz also congratulated Tom on his new position and said she enjoyed reading about his plans in last year's gossip sheet.
Bill McKay sends greetings from former member Tom Robertson. He also paid $10 to prove that he has made it through another year!
John Crossingham was very happy to report that Guy Rubello, our former exchange student from Brazil is coming to town later this month for John's daughter's wedding. John would like to try and organize a dinner with Guy and any of his former host families while he is here. John also advised that when going to the police station to pick up your police check report, the magic word is “Medulun”. Seems that that is how they are filed there!
John Bird was delighted that his friend and colleague Tom Arkell is our new President, and is sorry he missed his inauguration due to overwork. He also admitted, however that he is overpaid too.
Rob Reid paid a “Happy Choices” dollar because it turns out his wife Margy dated our new Lt. Governor David Onley before she was married to Rob. He also paid a “Hope” dollar, as he hopes she still agrees it was a good choice!
Ken Taylor was sort of happy to have spent two weeks in a 30 ft. motorhome on a road trip with his twin grandsons. He was really happy for the respite provided by a visit to the Rotary Splash Park in Drumheller, Alberta.
Dan Patterson congratulated new President Tom and advised he had spent some time in Argentina where Niagara College is working on a project to found a hospitality school. The Rotary Club of Welland is also working on an Aboriginal school in the same area.
Janet Johnston was happy to have recently spent two weeks sailing in the Thousand Islands...John was happy too...
John Nitsopoulos was happy to report that his Holiday Inn's recent golf tournament raised $8,000 for Alzheimers (oldtimers?) and $8000 for the new hospital. Good job John!
Guest Kithio Mwanzia who was sitting with Chief Wendy and had been discussing road carnage, was happy to report that he was involved in fundraising for a new Bursary for a Brock student who was killed on the road last year.
Art Wing paid $2 to congratulate President Tom and to report that he and Jacquie celebrated their 13 th anniversary with a cake while in Bulgaria .
50/50 Draw:
You would thing that Sergeant-at-arms Bill Williams would have known where the aces were, but although he had the winning ticket, he drew the 10 of diamonds. The $278 pot continues to grow!
Program:
Mary Margaret Murphy – Classification talk
John Lehnen introduced Mary Margaret by saying she is the second Mary Margaret Murphy he has known, the other being a rower. John first met Mary Margaret when he was canvassing for Hospice Niagara's capital campaign.
In her short time here, Mary Margaret has become involved as a community volunteer with Hospice Niagara (chairing their Speaker Series committee), with the CNIB, and with the St. Catharines and Thorold Chamber of Commerce. Within Rotary, she is involved in Rib Fest, TV Auction, Charitable Trust, Literacy, and Youth Leadership committees.
Mary Margaret began by thanking John and saying he is the second John Lehnen (Lennon) she has know too! She and her son Sean (and their dog Zelda) moved to St. Catharines almost 2 years ago. She as working for Desjardins Credit Union in London as their FA and had applied for the Branch Manager Position that had come available at the St. Catharines branch. She had never been to St. Catharines except driving through once on the way to Niagara Falls on the QEW. She was pretty excited about moving, but son, Sean, who was 14 at the time had few concerns. Did they have a McDonald's and internet? Mary Margaret assured him that they did (although she didn't know for sure) so on their first trip to St. Catharine to look for a place to live they stopped at McDonald's on Ontario Street for lunch just to put his mind to rest. After that Sean was pretty excited about moving until they ran into another snag…he met a girl. Then it was “Why do we have to move?” Can't you find a job in London ?” “Won't they give you your old job back?” Luckily enough the relationship only lasted 3 weeks, so he was pretty excited after that to move away from London. She really enjoys St. Catharines and are, with so much to do, and was happy that someone recommended Denis Morris High School for Sean.
Mary Margaret grew up in London. Her Dad was a Teacher and he taught for 40 years. At the time of his retirement he was a vice principal. Her Mother stayed at home to raise Mary Margaret, her brother and her sister. She later on went back to school and became a nurse. She was an RN working at Parkwood Hospital . The brother still lives in London with his wife and two kids, and her sister lives in Barbados with her husband and two kids and often encourages Mary Margaret to look for a job with a bank there. (Editor's note: and what's wrong with THAT?) Their parents live 6 month in Florida and the other 6 months at the family cottage in Rondeau Park .
Mary Margaret then told us about her grandparents, both of whom lived in small towns southwest of London . Her maternal Granddad was a businessman and Rotarian and she has fond memories of attending the Ridgetown Fair, which is a Rotary event similar to our Ribfest. Her grandfather was very community minded. He put together a committee to get an arena built. The auditorium upstairs is named after him. He also put together another committee to get a community swimming pool built. They took swimming lessons there every summer. His factory at one time employed over 250 employees. It was well known that if you needed a job you went and saw her grandfather; he always found something for you.
Her maternal grandmother loved to cook and entertain. She also believed that it was important to get an education and was always talking to Mary Margaret, and her brother and sister about going to college or university. She made sure they had the money to pay for our tuition.
Her paternal grandfather was a soya bean farmer. They owned over 200 acres of farm land which they farmed back then. He was very eccentric. He claimed he could charm warts off you. He would stand for hours outside the first day of spring, summer, fall and winter. He never told them what he was looking for but made his decision on whether to put the crop in or take it off based on what he saw. He said he was more accurate than the Farmers Almanac. One year, while plowing the fields he plowed up a family of skunks. Only a baby skunk survived so he took it home and fed it. When it got old enough he had it de-skunked and built a pen for it outside. His name was “Stinky”. That skunk lived for a long time. One year her grandfather tried to raise cows. But he got into a habit of naming them. So when it was time to send them off to the slaughter house he had a really tough time with it. He felt like he was sending his family. They didn't raise cattle after that.
Her paternal grandmother was deaf. She is the one responsible for Mary Margaret's red hair. She was an amazing cook as well and won numerous awards at the Ridgetown Fair for her pies. She was also very smart and Mary Margaret didn't realize how smart she was until later in life. Mary Margaret never learned sign language growing up as her Dad always did the talking for them. It wasn't until she was in her twenties that she and her brother decided to take sign language at Fanshawe College at nights. She signed to her Dad one day to practice and he didn't know what she had said! It turns out that he and his brother and sister made up their own sign languages to talk to their mother. So her grandmother knew the American sign language, and also knew three made up versions. When her grandfather passed away her grandmother met a gentleman who was deaf. Then, her grandmother had to translate for her Father because this guy she was seeing didn't have a clue as to what Mary Margaret's father was saying.
So Mary Margaret grew up in London , went to school in London and worked in London until she moved here. She was married at 20 and started working at Canada Trust in their mortgage department at Head Office which was located down town London . One of her jobs was as a collector. She took people's homes away from them. But apparently she wasn't your typical collector, as she often received gifts from clients. In fact, she was the only collector to receive gifts. She says she was always very respectful when dealing with families that were losing their home. One year of that was long enough, and she decided that she wanted to give credit instead of taking it away. She moved to their private label division as a Credit Approver. They did financing for the Brick, Home Hardware and Robinson Oligivy. She spent several years in this division, as a credit approver, to customer service, to collector…again. Canada Trust ultimately closed the private label financing division. Mary Margaret was pregnant at the time with Sean and when she came back from maturity leave, she went to work for their Mastercard division. And there she did it all again -- credit approver to customer service to collections. She had then had an opportunity to work as a mortgage specialist for Canada Trust. At that time Canada Trust had a partnership with Coldwell banker. This job allowed her to work from home, putting together mortgages that were referred by the Coldwell offices. One day while working at a Home Show in partnership with a Coldwell office and doing pre-approval for them at this show, she met a couple of financial advisor working for Investors Group.
They were looking for a mortgage specialist to work out of their London office. They wanted to meet her, so she thought she would go and find out more information about the job and what they were looking for. Next thing she knew, she was offered the job, which turned out to be a great opportunity. She stayed with Investors group for little over 6 years where she worked with the financial advisors and their clients putting mortgages together.
She then had an opportunity to work for TD Bank as a Financial Advisor, starting her training as a personal banker to learn their system as she had never actually worked in a retail branch. She moved around in her first 6 months and had worked at 7 different branches. She ended up working downtown London at their main Commercial Centre, which was a huge branch, and this is where she ended working as a financial advisor. Then TD bought Canada Trust so now she's working for Canada Trust again! Just before the merger weekend, she was assigned as a “plaider” (helping Red merge with Green). She switched places with a financial advisor at a Canada Trust branch, to was to help the CT people with the new system (which was the TD system), and make sure everything ran smoothly during merger weekend. She worked at that branch for about a month and a half helping the staff then was offered a branch manager position with TD's in-store operation which had branches inside Wal-Mart. She really had a lot of fun with this job. Unfortunately, after 2 ½ years TD realized that the business plan was flawed and decided to sever the relationship with Wal-Mart. In October 2004 over 100 branches were closed across Canada . TD CT was also closing other branches due to the merger. All 7 branches that she had worked at when she first started with TD had been closed. When the manager of the TDCT branch across the street from her in store branch, who was taking that book of business, found out about the branches that she had worked at, he was happy she took the package from TD. He thought she was jinxed.
The package allowed her to take a few month off, which was when a job came available with the Desjardins Credit Union. With my background and with all of the experiences she had had working at different jobs it made her the ideal candidate for the credit union. (Meanwhile she drove her Dad nuts changing jobs the way she did; remember, he retired after 40 years of being a teacher, and could not understand why she couldn't seem to stay in the same job longer than 2 years.)
A bit of a background on Desjardins Credit Union:
Desjardins bought the Province of Ontario Savings Office (POSO) which was a bank owned by the government. They only offered chequing/savings accounts and GIC's. The government had not been making any money and decided to sell it. There were a few credit unions that were interested but they only wanted to buy a few selected branches. The bank of Hong Kong was interested however the government wanted to sell it to a cooperative. So they approached Desjardins and the rest is history.
Desjardins was founded by Alphonse Desjardins who opened the first Caisse Populaire in Levis , Quebec on December 6, 1900, which was Alphonse's home town. Alphonse didn't start the credit union until later in his life. He had been working in the House of Commons in Ottawa and travelling back and forth between Ottawa and Levis . He transcribed debates in the House of Commons. In 1890 he was shocked to hear ordinary folks were falling victim to loan sharking since they did not have access to banks. A lot of this people were being charge 214%. Between 1907 and 1914 Alphonse personally founded 146 Caisses and was behind opening credit unions across Canada and in the Unitied States. Upon his death on October 31,1920, 220 Caisses Populaires had been founded, 187 in Quebec , 24 in Ontario and 9 in the United States .
It was because of Alphonse Desjardins that we have credit unions today.
Desjardins is the number one financial institution in Quebec and the sixth largest in Canada in terms of assets, it is among the top 150 financial institutions in the world.
The services available through Desjardins branches:
Desjardins Securities
Disnat
Desjardins Financial Security – insurance packages for business.
The Personal
Desjardins Trust
Desjardins Wealth Management
Desjardins Payroll and HR Services
Desjardins Visa
Mary Margaret finished by saying she is an avid runner, having completed seven half marathons, including two this year. She is trying to decide what the next half marathon would be so got on the internet to look up what races were coming up this fall. There are a couple close to home, including the Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon or the Run for the Grapes in St. Catharines . But there was one that caught my eye that seems very interesting. It's the Extraterrestrial Full Moon Midnight Run in Rachel, Nevada . This race starts as 12:30 in the morning and you run along area 51 where they have had the most UFO sightings.
Mary Margaret then thanked John Lehnen for getting her involved with Hospice Niagara and Rotary and then thanked the club for the opportunity to speak today.
Brian St. Hilaire thanked Mary Margaret, pointing out that classification talks are an excellent way for Rotarians to get to know each other. He described Mary Margaret as being obviously “high energy”, just what our club needs
President Tom also thanked Mary Margaret, by presenting a dictionary from the club, which will go to Edith Cavell school in aid of literacy, inscribed with the Club's and Mary Margaret's names.
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Mary Margaret Murphy
& President Tom Arkell |
Tom's Rotary moment, compliments of the club's History committee, advised us that it was exactly 84 years ago when Frank Wyman gave the first classification talk.
Meeting adjourned at 1:20.
Next week: Les Groves, giving his 100 th speech to a Rotary club.
Other Announcements:
• ROTARY District Newsletter for June is now available at http://www.rotary7090.org/pdfs/districtnews/DN0706.pdf
• The 9 th annual FACS Fall Gala is being held at White Oaks on Friday October 12 th . For more info, or to book tickets, call 905 937-7731 ext 3304
• The annual MS Bike Tour takes place in Niagara on August 26 th . There are 40 and 75 km routes along the Niagara Parkway . Call 1 800 268-7582 for more details, or register at msbiketours.com
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