President-Elect: John Fortney Vice-President: Prince Kumar
Treasurer: Rick Goldsmith
Executive Director: Carol Hutchinson
RI President
Mark Maloney, Decatur, Alabama
District Governor
Beth Selby, RC of Cobourg
Editor of the week: Maureen Bird
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Virtual Lunch, June 26, 2020 President Kevin Power
Time: 12 noon for intro, 12:15 for meeting start.
More Power to You
We are reaching the end of another Rotary year. What a year. The end of a year is a time for us to reflect on our Club meetings, activities, successes and challenges this past year. To recognize the efforts and contributions of our members and our impact on our community.
There were a number of highlight meetings for me this past year. It may seem a long time ago that members were feeling hot, hot, hot in the Imperial Room, up and dancing to the steel drums. The sounds of Caribana with members and guests showing off their limbo skills on the patio at the National Club. Enjoying the WERMs at the National Club.
Celebrating with seniors at our annual Seniors Christmas luncheon. Enjoying the entertainment and food at our Club Christmas luncheon. Our special lunch meetings led by our various committees. This year included International Service hosting a meeting in honour of Peter Naylor and his solar panel project in Ghana. At our last in person meeting on March 6, we celebrated International Women’s Day led by the Women’s Initiatives Committee with a full room at the National Club. Our Environmental Committee hosted our Earth day luncheon with our very first virtual guest speaker. The format of Youth Day could not be the same this year but our Youth and Children committee arranged an update for us from our great Rotaract Clubs. Once again this year we had an impactful Indigenous Peoples Day luncheon this past week.
Thank you to Bert Steenburgh and the program committee for another exemplary year of speakers.
We did have a busy year of activities in the club. Highlights include the District Foundation walk in September, held in our backyard at Humber College Campus in Etobicoke, along the shores of Lake Ontario. In October we had a strong turnout of members at the District Conference in Muskoka. The Veterans Forum led by Sylvia Geist and her team addressing release trauma in our vets. We held our 91st annual Children’s Christmas Party. A morning snowfall did not slow down our Rotary volunteers or Mayor John Tory for attending. Don Bell and his team led a very successful partnership with the Breakfast in support of Progress Place in March. This year, we had a number of other first time activities, out of necessity. Members enjoyed their “quarantinis” at virtual cocktail parties. Some of us (me at least) started learning how to cook at our virtual dinner club meetings. Virtual wine club, gardening club, book club and euchre as well. A special thank you to Pat Neuman and the Fellowship and Entertainment Committee for all of your efforts this past year, especially during COVID-19. For helping to keep us connected.
This past November Vice President Prince Kumar and his team of directors led a successful Club Assembly. The assembly was in relation to the transition of our club committee structure. Following the assembly, several working groups were established. This included a 10 person Transition Team that met once a week, sometimes twice, from January. There have been healthy debates and discussions on how to change our committee structure. The meetings continued virtually during COVID-19 and progress has been made and the transition team is working to finalize the structure and a process to roll out the new committee structure once we are meeting again in person. I do want to say a special thank you to the members of the transition committee led by Vice President Prince Kumar, President Elect John Fortney, Past President’s Jeff Dobson, Pat Neuman and Richard White, Directors Anny Sandra Hamel and Dawn-Marie King and members Sylvia Geist and Emre Yurga,
One of the goals of Rotary International this year was to grow Rotary. Membership remained a key issue for our club this past year. A special thank you to Dawn-Marie King for all her efforts and initiatives in relation to membership this year. This was a very large task to take on her efforts will greatly assist our club moving forward. I am very pleased to welcome all of our new members this year and that we were able to virtually introduce two new members.
At my initial meeting as your Club President last July, I talked about how as a Club we would need to continue to adapt and change. Looking back at this past year, I am very proud to see our Club adapt and change to the challenges we have faced, particularly with COVID-19.
Our Foundation stepped up and provided $300,000 for specific COVID-19 funding. Our philanthropic committees reached out into our community to find needs arising from COVID-19. COVID-19 disproportionately impacted the disadvantaged in our community. Through our efforts, we made an impact on our community so that we could make an impact. The Foundation under the leadership of Susan Howson remains a strength of our club. Thank you to Susan Howson and the Foundation Board for your stewardship and leadership.
It was a year not like many other years. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is significant. Public health measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 have been far reaching. We had to cancel in person lunches, in person committee meetings. At this time, we remain in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this week moving to Stage 2 of the reopening. The economic and social impact of COVID-19 has been significant.
Our club was in its infancy during the H1N1 virus, commonly known as the Spanish Flu outbreak between 1918 and 1920. In 2003, our club was led by Past President John Andras through SARS.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all of us, it has also allowed us as a Club an opportunity to adapt and change. The Rotary International theme this past year was Rotary Connects the World. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic we have, out of necessity, had to learn new ways to connect.
We moved to virtual meetings. I will, for the last time as President, once again be using the boardroom in my office to talk to you through my iPad. I must say it is strange for me, but I do get to ring the Rotary bell to lead off our meetings. The move to a virtual meeting was a challenge. It has been a learning process for us and for those involved in the meetings. I am very thankful for the tremdous assistance of Vice President Prince Kumar, Carol Hutchinson and Maureen Bird with the production of the virtual meetings. As well as the assistance of our musicians Lorna Johnson, Brigitte Bogar and Glenn Davis. For the involvement of all of our members introducing speakers, being virtual Let’s be Personal speakers and Geoffrey Johnson and Neil Phillips giving that was the week that was. When the meetings are done, Vice President Prince Kumar edits and shares the meetings. The virtual meetings are posted to our club Facebook page as well as to our website. Talk about adapting.
I was excited to be welcoming into our board this year four amazing members bringing their experience and perspectives to our club board. Unfortunately, Luzita Kennedy left the club this year. We will also lose Lorna Johnson as a member as she and Cliff recently moved out to Victoria B.C. I want to thank both Luzita and Lorna for their great contributions to our club. I would also like to thank our outgoing directors Alex Brown, Mary Lach and Don Brooks for your service on the club board. It was a pleasure to serve and work with each of you on the board.
Thank you to Maureen Bird and her Voice crew for all of their efforts this past year and for adapting to the changes of COVID-19.
Thank you to President Elect John Fortney for all of your support and assistance this past year. Especially with our social media. It has been a pleasure to serve and work with you.
With the COVID-19 pandemic we also closed the Rotary office. I want to say a special thank you to Carol and Belli. Carol has worked tirelessly through this pandemic and has been a tremendous assistance. This included time for additional board, executive and committee meetings, as well as organizing and coordinating all of the materials for the COVID-19 ad hoc committees, and spending time on phone calls on a myriad of issues as we moved through COVID-19. A special thank you to Belli for your additional work as well in our budgeting and accounting and co-ordinating the signing of cheques.
While we do have some challenges, I am confident that working together we will continue to take on and resolve these challenges. We will continue to adopt and change as we move forward. With John Fortney, Prince Kumar and Jayson Phelps, we have strong leadership moving forward, a great board of directors and dedicated club members. Our future is bright.
It was a pleasure and an honour to serve as President of this great Club. I am most grateful to have this part in my Rotary journey and for this opportunity to serve.
Make Your Donations Now to Double our Impact in Stage 2.
As President of the Rotary Club of Toronto Charitable Foundation, I am asking for your help.
As Toronto moves into Stage 2 and you can get a haircut, there are others who may not be able to afford one. There are many who will have lost their jobs and yet still need to find food for their families.
There will be families that have suffered abusive situations or mental distress and need shelter and support.
The Foundation gave The Rotary Club of Toronto $100,000 to be dispersed amongst the not for profits that they know. The Foundation has also been distributing $100,000.
These funds have gone to groups who have lost their fundraising ability due to no social contact. These groups are not big but have a large impact on many. Also like all of us they have had increased costs due to programming changes so they can connect and support and the added cost of personal support equipment that was not on budgets.
The Foundation needs to raise money to continue to help those in need in Toronto. We have also had to postpone our fundraising event. We want to do more but in order to do that we need more funds from you and your families and associates.
The Foundation is doing a matching grant for an additional $100,000. The matching ends June 30, 2020 and that is less than a week away.
Donate now and help the Rotary Club of Toronto Charitable Foundation do more for those in need in our community.
Susan Howson
President Of the Rotary Club of Toronto Charitable Foundation
On a beautiful sunny day monitors throughout Canada tuned into our Rotary lunch for a thoughtful and evocative celebration of Indigenous People’s Day. Following recognition of first nation territories, President Kevin Power asked Elder Audrey DeRoy to open our meeting. She described the pandemic COVID was like her peoples still being in their winter camps, an extended isolation, before the spring thaw. During this time she encouraged us all to be kind, and look after each other. We are all connected (not only on web today :-). She was gracious to have received our club’s tobacco offering in a little red pouch, which she had lit, honoring all Turtle
Island's past and future residents, and blessed the meeting with a powerful song and drum. Visually she spoke holding a feather, in front of a mantle of memorabilia, festooned with a small black buffalo head at its centre. I couldn’t help but think of the buffalo’s past glory, nomadically roaming the plains, with first peoples in tow, soon to be endangered.
Bill Empey, then spoke as chairman of the Indigenous Service Committees past year’s work, supporting Brantford’s Woodland Cultural Centers” Save the Evidence” campaign preserving one of Canada’s last standing residential schools (The Mush Hole), Water First projects educating first nations youth to monitor their remote drinking water systems, Wandering Spirit school murals, Native Child and Family Services support, where the committee meets monthly, Toronto Pow Wows, Na-Me-Res meal prep, and assembling “Welcome Boxes” for first nation’s students arriving in Thunder Bay for high school. With the COVID crisis, Bill pressed our club into action, with help from the Andras Foundation, donating funds to Anishnawbe Health Center for supporting 100 at risk youth, grocery gift cards for Wandering Spirit School food security, and support of Senior’s Wigwamen Terrace. T
he Lieutenant Governor, the Honorable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, had technical difficulties, before quick switch to her staff members monitor, stating it’s amazing the Rotary Club persisted with this event online, despite the health crisis, and thanked all for joining this virtual meeting. She said an important outcome of this pandemic is instead of getting back to normal..we should make a better normal, and dare to dream of a better society. She thanked the club, acknowledged the wrongs of the crown and good works underway to correct these grievances, paving the way for reconciliation.
Chris Snyder introduced our speaker Alain Bartleman, stating his father James Bartleman, was the past, and first First Nation Lieutenant Governor in Ontario, whose speech on indigenous mental health, had greatly influenced our club, 5 years ago. It inspired the creation of the Indigenous Service Committee and more recently Honouring Indigenous Peoples (HIP) with the support of 230 clubs across Canada, which encourages education and builds relationships between Canadians and First Nations communities. Chris introduced Alain as being educated at UCC, Trinity College, McGill and Geneva before becoming a lawyer and instead of sitting comfortably in a large law firm, had chosen to follow his heritage, practicing law within his indigenous community.
Alain then took the monitor stating he was Anishnawbe and his talk will centre on better relations between first nations and settlers. He said Chris Snyder had asked him to speak on the legality of Wet’suwet’en protest and how the movement spread across Canada. He said he always has time to speak to Rotary clubs as they not only shepherd great philanthropy, but always put their money, where their mouth is. Allain began by stating the Europeans upon their arrival, didn’t find this land empty, as over 60 million first nations lived in relative harmony, with robust governments, respecting each other and even gaining respect of their European contemporaries. In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia in Europe, articulated the concept of territorial sovereignty, later a legal concept, all courts would use and still do, to push first nations off their ancestral lands. Interestingly, the French had been in new world for only a century, the English, a half century and the Spanish a century and half, despite being first nations home for 3 millenniums, The spirit of the first treaties was nation to nation, which was never honored in its true meaning and intent, Allain contends. Subsequent genocidal legislation within the Indian Act and government failure to act on supreme court rulings, has been a boon to first nations unique language, culture and tradition, failing to stop the racism, exploitation,& ongoing abuse to our people throughout Canada. I couldn’t help but think of the recent pensions paid to first nations vets from the great wars, with many of them having past on, embarrassed as Canadian that 75 yrs later we finally treat these heros as fellow citizens.
Alain was heartened by the rebirth of his people’s pride of self government, which he envisions as a third level of government, sitting equally amongst their federal and provincial elected counterparts. The scars of present policy have left indigenous peoples representing 30% of Canada’s prisons, despite only representing 3% of the population, with very little hope and chance of finishing high school. They represent the fastest growing population within Canada, making our ethnically rich bilingual country even richer, When asked if elected or ancestral chiefs should call the shots representing their communities, as they seemed at odds in the recent pipeline disputes, he said it depends on the situation given over 300 distinct geographically diverse groups across the land. In relation to why first nations across Canada protested with BC Wet’suwet’en, he quoted the words of Martin Luther King, that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” He also stated that BC is in the driver’s seat informing aboriginal law and land claims throughout the country. He sees positive winds of change and is optimistic for his people's future. Elder Audrey DeRoy then closed the meeting, encouraging us all to continue our good works and caring, with a spirited song stating there are no goodbyes, no beginning and end, only the present, so look forward to meeting everyone again.
Miigwech
Her Honour, Elizabeth Dowdeswell
Elder Audrey DeRoy of the Anizaatikoong First Nation
This is perfect for a hot day in summer. It is also a very adaptable recipe.
Choose your protein - beef, chicken, pork or tofu.
Serve with rice or noodles.
What vegetables do you have on hand? You will see carrots and peppers in the pictures.
Peanuts or cashews? Both work and benefit from a light toasting.
This Saturday - Sweet spicy drumsticks. Next week - green curry chicken skewers. Contact Neil Phillips for recipes and link.
More F&E Activities
We are here for the long term so please join in. All events are listed on our Google Calendar accessible through your @rotarytoronto.com account or find the emails sent out in advance. Contact Maureen Bird to set up your access. 416-804-3726.
Saturday nights - Virtual Cooking Class - contact Neil Phillips for invitation
For The Love of Gardening, Tuesday June 30, 4 pm
Euchre with Jay Llave, Tuesday June 30, 5 pm
COVID-19 Talking Helps, TBD, Tuesday 7 pm
Book Club, TBD, Tuesday 2 pm
More dates to follow
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Our District Wrapup, Tuesday, June 30, 6:45 pm
Let’s celebrate the 2019/20 year and the achievements of District Governor Beth Selby. Join us with a cocktail and have some fun.
Her Honour, Elizabeth Dowdeswell
Elder Audrey DeRoy of the Anizaatikoong First Nation