Guests: Exchange student Alex Buche from Belgium, Laetitia de Witt and Bob McKay from the Rotary Club of St. Catharine’s South, new outbound student Abby McDougall.
Member Attendance: 15 Members Club Anniversaries: Dan T June 14, ‘89
Birthdays: Deborah June 9
Our Partners: Peter P June 25
Wedding Anniversaries: Dan and Pat K June 14
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Correspondence received:
Brittany Hesmer attended the North American RYLA conference with support from Colborne and Brighton Rotary clubs. She is only available locally last week of June as she is now going to school and working this summer in Ottawa. She is speaking at Colborne Rotary June 26 and Brighton Rotary is invited.
Club Runner - updated your Club's website to our new Next-Gen theme Vision and updated the Club logo to match the current year's Rotary theme, updated Home Page Navigation Bar, and added a few Rotary International related images to your new carousel home page banner.
Thank you letter from Parkinson’s Canada for donation in memory of former Rotarian Ben Ring.
Announcements:
Speaker: Outbound Exchange Student – Abigail McDougall
R Ricardo introduced Abby.
Abby is in countdown mode – 11 weeks, 2 days before she leaves. She is 16 and attends ENSS. She learned of the exchange program in grade 9 and applied last year unsuccessfully. Abby is very excited to be going on exchange.
She is looking forward to experience new things and broaden her horizons and perspectives. The language, people and to challenge herself to adapt.
She will be going to Cambrai, near Belgium border, only couple hours from Alex. The population of Cambrai is 33,000. Her school will be Saint Luc. She has already made contact with her host families.
Abby has the adventure bug.
She has a younger sister and two younger brothers.
R Dave stepped up and thanked Abby.
Song: Clementine
50/50: $14.50 won by R Steve who gave it to students to split
Happy Bucks: good weather, good luck to Abby in France and for presentation, work and happy to have job even if she has to start at 6am, East Coast trip leaving June 28 to July 11, watch graduate parade, to be at Rotary, positive women, for being Archaic, very happy things going well, pump patrol hours reduced to check and go, 60 years ago on the boat to Canada with 2 kids and never looked back, exchange student program, wishing Abby well, celebrate birthday, Sept 6 to Nepal and back Oct 20, canoe trip, Relay for Life this weekend, Presqu’ile Lighthouse in running for $60,000 grant and 4 ½ weeks to vote on line, Street Dance going well, 1st baseball game this year after start of season delayed due to weather.
Rotary Minute: The Rotary Spirit
Rotarians in the Czech Republic know what it means to persevere. They have chartered and re-chartered their clubs not once, not twice, but three times during the past century. Still, their ranks remain nearly 1,000 strong.
Rotary first appeared in the former Czechoslovakia in 1924, with the inauguration of the Rotary Club of Prague. For the next 14 years, Rotary prospered in the capital city, helping to lay groundwork throughout the country for a proud tradition that would soon have to endure a tumultuous half -century.
When German forces occupied Czechoslovakia in the months leading up to World War II, Rotary clubs quickly became obsolete. But while formal meetings were nonexistent during the war, many service-minded individuals remained committed to Rotarian ideals and values.
After World War II, former Rotarians were keen to revive their clubs. A 1945 letter from Rotarian Jaroslav Podhajsky reads: “The Rotarians of Prague stuck together during the occupation and everybody did their part to help the other fellow Rotarians. The call of re-establishing Rotary in Czechoslovakia has been loud … they all believe that they never stopped being Rotarians … all remain true Rotarians in spirit.”
Sentiments like this helped Rotary rebound quickly after the war – but they weren’t enough to see the clubs through in the face of tightening government controls. In 1948, just three years after Rotary resurfaced, the Soviet government declared Rotary club’s illegal and terminated all 31 clubs that Czech Rotarians had recently formed or re-chartered. For the next four decades, while Czechoslovakia remained under Soviet authority, Rotary was silent.
In 1990, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Rotary Club of Prague was re-established for the third time. Today, the Czech Republic is home to 38 Rotary Clubs.
By M. Kathleen Pratt, The Rotarian
