2015 Speakers

Our guest speaker this month was Betty-Lou Souter, the CEO of Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold, mentioning a few of the many awards, including an honourary law degree from Brock University, that she has received for her service to the community. Betty-Lou said that in 1919 Mrs. Charles Taylor used a horse and buggy to deliver a pot...

Bruce Woods reading an excerpt from his book Our guest speaker, Bruce Woods, displayed blown up representations of his two books – Between Two Women and Between Two Worlds. Both books are memoirs. The first, which has sold more than 11,000 copies, deals with his life growing up in Stratford and how he was forced into the role of peacemaker...

Our speaker this month was Brady Wood, who is chief communications officer at Niagara Health System, but he spoke to us about the Canadian Arab Institute. Brady is the interim chair of the Canadian Arab Institute and is the only non-Arab on the board of directors for the organization which was founded in 2011. He used a PowerPoint presentation to...

Retiring President Vic Cicci hands over the gavel to in-coming President Andy Redman as the new Management Committee for 2015-2016 was inducted at the club’s Annual General eeting in September. The September meeting is the occasion of our Annual General Meeting. At this meeting, we elected our new Management Committee Team for the 2015-2016 year who are shown below. From...

Our speaker this month was Lois Sarkisian, CAA manager of groups and tours. Lois talked about group travel and how to prepare for a trip. Her talk included travel tips, advice on using a registered travel agent (TICO), how to achieve great savings on tours by taking a reposition cruise, travel Europe in winter and cruise over the US Thanksgiving...

At our July monthly meeting, Keith Pitts, author of “The Canadian Cross-Border Shopping Guide” — as the title implies a guide to shopping in the U.S. Some of the points Keith made included: The reality of the falling value of the Canadian dollar 95% of imported goods are priced at US dollars Food costs in Canada are 12% higher than in the US US high-end stores are moving into Canada...

Our guest speaker this month was Mr. Thanh Campbell who lives in Hamilton and operates three businesses in addition to his speaking career. He sits on a number of boards including McMaster Children’s Hospital new Health Centre, and the Hamilton Media Arts Council. Mr Campbell will also be launching two new internet TV shows that he will host, Hope for the...

Our speaker this month was David Alexander, Executive Director of Niagara Work-force Planning Board (at the left above).  The NWPB serves the Niagara region as the leader in local labour market planning. It is one of twenty-five planning regions that make up Ontario’s Local Boards Network and is funded through Em-ployment Ontario. The Board is currently conducting a survey of...

Charles Curley, formerly of the Department of Revenue, and an expert on taxation was our featured speaker as April 30th loomed in all of our minds. His topic was “Income Tax in Canada”. Not a subject one would think exciting. However Charles discussed taxes with much humour and gave an excellent presentation. Charles discussed tax allowances, some of which were a...

At our March meeting, Bill Brice spoke on the topic of Potash in Saskatchewan. Bill also showed a video called “It’s Our Land”, produced by Danielle Morandini, a young Niagara College student, focusing on the impact and some times conflicting interests of Saskatchewan residents/farmers and corporate interests in mining for potash in the province. It is clear the potash industry is...

Our guest speaker this month was Ellen Savoia, Senior Planner, City of St Catharines.  Ellen advised that the new Official Plan and Zoning By-laws had been introduced in December 2013 after extensive public input and countless staff meetings. Both the Plan and the By-laws control city planning. The Official Plan is the land-use policy which defines the city’s vision and...

Our guest speaker this month, Marie Rusnak, nurse practitioner at the Niagara District Stroke Centre put strokes in context by explaining that there are about 50,000 strokes in Canada each year with an annual price tag of 3.6 billion dollars. There are approximately 300,000 Canadians living with stroke. A stroke was described as an interruption of blood and oxygen to a...