THE WEEKLY BULLETIN OF THE ROTARY CLUB OF MONTREAL-LAKESHORE                            

                                                                                               (Chartered February 27, 1961)

 

                                                         http://www.rotary-montreal-lakeshore.org/Bulletin.htm

 

 

Vol. 2011-12, Issue No. 32        Tuesday, February 7, 2012

 

 

This Week’s Program…

Jennifer will tell us all about an exciting new no-calorie sweetener her firm has developed, called Stevia.

 

Birthdays and Anniversaries…

Happy Anniversary, Bill & June... Monday, February 13th!

 

Future Programs…

Feb 14:    Valentines Day Special. Bring your sweetie!

Feb 21:    Glenn Bradley, on Scouting Today.

Feb 28:    Our club’s 51st birthday celebration.

 

Special Events…

May 25:   Our Annual Auction for Charity, at the Royal Saint Lawrence Yacht Club.

 

Last Week’s Meeting…

Nineteen members, including Sonia Cantalupi from our satellite club, and four guests gathered in the Holiday Inn Pointe-Claire last Tuesday to share Rotary and learn about the Circle of Peace, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness of the value of a culture of non-violence.

In addition to guest speaker Jean Trudel and his colleague Chris Adam, we were pleased to welcome Roger Munanga and Dieumerci Munanga, guests of Wilfried; Al Céré, guest of Wayne; and prospective member Emily Scott.

 We missed the fellowship of George B, Abie, Mary, Laurie, Stan, Brahm, Bob, Jesper, Manon, Maher, Anne, Peter, PDG Serge, George S, Cameron, Art and Joe Z.

 

 

 

 

Maureen announced that:

§     a meeting of interested parties to discuss the multi­club Rotaract inter­national project pro­posal com­pe­tition will take place on Tuesday, February 7 (that would be today!). Venue and time of the meeting to be announced.

§     Spouses and partners are invited to our Valentines Day meeting, February 14th.

§     a meeting of the 2013 District Conference Orga­nizing Committee will take place at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, February 15th at the Old Montreal Holiday Inn (corner Viger & St. Urbain). Maureen said she is looking for four (4) members from our club to attend.

§     our club’s next visit to the Old Brewery Mission will take place on Thursday, April 12th.

§     Sonia has agreed to be our special rep to the members of our satellite club, to promote the auction.

Auction chairperson Youssef reminded us that this year’s auction has a target objective of $18,000.00 net, and told us:

§     The venue will again be the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club.

§     All items will be master-listed on a computer;

§     The Silent Auction items will be projected on a screen;

§     Rotaractors will pass through the audience continuously, to keep bid lists up to date.

He also told us that tickets for this year’s auction will be available on February 14th.

Corporate sponsors solicitation letters will be bilingual.

Youssef said he is looking for unusual auction items and urged members to do some creative thinking in that regard. He would also like to have members’ new, improved ideas for promoting the auction this year.

Lastly, President Maureen told us the auction promotion committee, consisting of J-P, Magued and Youssef, will design and create a special auction website, liaising with Bob to link it to our club’s website.

 

Magued introduced our two guests from Circle of Peace.  “Jean Trudel is an award-winning producer-director who has produced many Documentary / Variety Specials for television,” Magued told us.

“Doing research for his latest documentary film, Jean realized that there was no one in Canada promoting the United Nations Inter­national Day of Peace (IDP) He put his film on hold and created Cercle de Paix – Circle of Peace, a Canadian NGO promoting the IDP and UNESCO’s Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non Violence for the Children of the World.”

 

 

 

 

 

Jean Trudel did the actual speaking from the podium while his colleague, Chris Adam, manned the projector, keeping every­thing on track to synchronize with Jean’s present­ation.

Jean told us he sits on the International Day of Peace Non-Governmental Organizations Committee at the United Nations.

He opened with a short video of Algonquin Chief Dominic Rankin speaking at the commemoration of the Ecological Peace Garden at Dawson College on September 13, 2011, marking the fifth anniversary of the shooting incident. Chief Rankin pre­sented Dawson with a sacred white eagle feather that had travelled all around the planet, gathering the prayers for peace of people everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also on that day, Rev. Deborah Moldow, a United Nations representative from the World Peace Prayer Society, presented Dawson with a peace pole—“one of over 250,000 placed all over the world,” she said. [Note to our readers: Magued has passed around a short article noting that RI President Banerjee

will receive a Peace Pole at the Rotary International Convention in Bangkok May 6th—9th, then permanently install it at Chula University near Peace and Conflict Resolution Campus. Ed.].

Jean spoke about Dawson’s CRLT (Community Recreation Leadership Training) program, observing that “Dawson’s Peace Garden is truly an oasis of peace.” He introduced his colleague Chris Adam, a teacher at Dawson College, saying that they had started working together to promote the UN Decade for the Culture of Peace (2001-2010), rewarding students who em­braced the vision of a culture of non-violence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They decided to take an annual “Peace Bus” to New York City to per­mit the students to participate in Peace Day at the UN every September 21st (International Day of Peace). In 2010 they took 24 students, he told us. Last year they had 55 students, including two Rotaractors. They visited the UN Rose Garden and Jean showed us a photo of the students holding flags of many nations.

“This year we hope to take two busloads of students,” he said.

Jean also spoke about Rotary’s Peace Initiatives. He said he was particularly impressed to note that RI President-Elect Sakuji Tanaka has chosen as Rotary’s theme for 2012-2013 “Peace Through Service.”

He played excerpts from President-Elect Tanaka’s address to the 2012 International Assembly.

 

 

 

"Peace, in all of the ways that we can understand it, is a real goal and a realistic goal for Rotary," he said. "Peace is not something that can only be achieved through agreements, by governments, or through heroic struggles. It is something that we can find and that we can achieve, every day and in many simple ways."

“No definition is right, and no defi­nition is wrong," the RI President-Elect said. "However we use the word, this is what peace means for us.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jean was thanked by Wayne, who told him, “I have been pleasantly surprised to see how closely the aims and goals of Circle of Peace are aligned with those of Rotary. Peace has always been a key component of the fabric of Rotary. The “Object of Rotary” encourages “the advancement of inter­national understand, goodwill and peace” through the world­wide fellowship of Rotarians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In accepting the thanks of the club for their presentation, Jean and Chris urged us to help promote a minute of silence on International Peace Day, September 21, 2012. “We hope to have simultaneous satellite participation by youth groups around the world in a very special observance on that day,” Jean added.

 

 

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RI Past President Wilf Wilkinson once said, “All of Rotary’s projects, no matter how small, have the potential to build understanding and bring peace. Every project has a two-fold purpose:  meeting its practical objective and building inter­national goodwill and friendship.”