2013 Speakers

Our Christmas monthly meeting was held on Tuesday, December 12th and it got us into the Christmas spirit. Bob Henderson led us in a very spirited Christmas carol sing-a-long accompanied by John Butler on the electronic keyboard. After our usual intermission and networking break, Art Currie led us through a second version of his popular Christmas trivia quiz. Art  Currie...

Our October monthly meeting was held at the Grantham Lions Hall (our new monthly meeting venue) on October 12th, 2013.  As this was the day after Remembrance Day, the focus of this meeting was to reflect on and remember the sacrifices of Canadians in wars past and present. Walter Asbil and Dennis Ray presented a short Remembrance Service. After an...

Our October monthly meeting was held at the Grantham Lions Hall (our new monthly meeting venue) on October 8th, 2013. Our featured speaker was Steve Solski, the Executive Director of the Performing Arts Centre being built in downtown St. Catharines. He spoke to us about that development and the Brock University’s adjacent Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts. The...

A more complete report on our Annual General Meeting will be found in our October 2013 PROBE Newsletter at the end of this month. We elected a new Executive for 2013-2014 and they can be seen in the photo above. Please note that beginning next month (October), we will be meeting in a new location, the Grantham Lions Club hall...

Our August meeting featured Margaret Pickles of Niagara College. Margaret told us the fascinating story of the Monarch butterfly and the annual migration that occurs each year. She also discussed recent threats to the viability of the Monarch. Record low numbers of monarchs in 2012-13 are attributed to cold spring temperatures and drought conditions. Those wishing to help preserve these...

O Our speaker on July 9th was Tim Rigby who as Regional Councillor is serving his fifth term in this role. He formerly served as Mayor of the City of St. Catharines from 1997 to 2006.  Tim has also as past President of the Canadian Henley Rowing Corporation and the Canadian Amateur Rowing Association. Tom spoke to us about the...

  Our guest speaker at our June monthly meeting was Dr. Mariek Schmidt, from Brock  University. Mariek, who is involved in a NASA Mars research project, told us about “Curiosity in Gale Crater Mars.” Mariek is a scientist (one of 400) working on the rover vehicle “Curiosity” the fourth vehicle sent to Mars. Mariek provided several fascinating photos of Mars,...

Our guest speaker, Cathy Summers, from the St. Catharines Heritage Society, who gave a talk entitled, “Home From the War”. Now, we had expected a talk on wartime housing, but what we got was much more. As she reviewed this project put together to mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Cathy took us on...

Corrie presents the Bruce Trail story Our guest speaker was Corrie Kellestine of the Bruce Trail Club. Corrie recently retired and is now taking time to pursue her hobby of hiking and serves as the Media Relations Director with the Niagara Chapter of the Bruce Trail Club. Corrie told us she has had a life-long passion for the outdoors. She...

Candice Turner-Smith and Bradley Thachuk from the Niagara Symphony Orchestra were our guest speakers for March.  Candice has recently taken over as Managing Director of the Symphony and Bradley is the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor who joined the Symphony last season after spending nine years as the Associate Conductor of the Fort Wayne Symphony Orchestra. Candice gave us a...

This month’s meeting featured a presentation by Bob Cooper, Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s official photographer.   Bob presenting a stunning display of photos from all aspect of Pierre Trudeau’s life as he followed Pierre and his family all over the world while he was Prime Minister.  His commentary around the slides also richly described what it was like in those times and...

This month’s meeting featured a presentation by Dave Siegel, the Director of the Niagara Community Observatory at Brock University on the topic of “Problems of Governance in the Niagara Region”.   Dave noted that the classic model of local government focused on its role in the democratization of government (providing local access to government for citizens) and in the provision...