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SUMMER MEETINGS IN JULY AND AUGUST CHANGE LOCATION EACH WEEK - HOSTED AT ROTARIAN HOMES. SEE UPCOMING CLUB EVENTS FOR MORE INFORMATION RE HOST AND ADDRESS EACH WEEK.

Welcome to the Rotary Club of St. Marys

Service Above Self

We meet Mondays at 6:30 PM
Rotary Parkview building

22 St. Andrews St. N., St. Marys
Parkview banquet hall, lower level east entrance
St. Marys, ON N4X 1C5
Canada

District Site

Venue Map

Mailing Address: 12-20 Huron St. N, St. Marys, ON N4X 1C5

2019 Rural Urban Event

SAVE THE DATE: THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2019

Tickets can be purchased online with
Visa, MasterCard or American Express

Click on "Upcoming Events"

(upper left on our website)

https://rotarystmarys.ca/event/2019-rotary-rural-urban

Annual All-You-Can-Eat Spaghetti Dinner

RI Theme for March - Water and Sanitation

In Rotary, the RI Theme for March is Water and Sanitation.

(Look closely - Is that Stan Malcolm in this photo?) -Rotary Club of Stratford's Aquabox Project

Aquaboxes are a project unique to the Rotary Club of Stratford, which tries to keep a supply of them on hand to ship to disaster zones around the world. The Aquabox unit contains multiple self disinfecting silver impregnated ceramic cartridges (Filters). These filters are attached inside a receiving container into which the contaminated water is introduced.

The filter system is designed to trap and kill harmful bacteria >99.99999% ( E.coli, Coliform, Faecal Coliform), >99.95 % protozoan cysts (Giardia, Cryptosporidium) and filter particulates as small as 0.3 MICRONS (99.9%) The ceramic cartridges are cleanable and reusable.

This top container, with the filters, is attached to the lid of the receiving container which is equipped with a tap for dispensing the now potable water. The connection is designed to prevent any introduction of other contaminants into the lower container. (As required by the World Health Organization’s guidelines).

The system is capable of providing potable water for a family of 5 for up to one year. It is light, portable and easy to use until other sources of potable water are available.

The distributors of the Aqabox system, to the recipient’s families, are qualified personnel who instruct in the proper assembly and use at the site of the disaster.

For information on the Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group, please click on Read More...

President's Corner- March 2019

Legacy

On 23 February,114 years ago, Paul P. Harris, Gustavus Loehr, Silvester Schiele, and Hiram E. Shorey gathered in Loehr’s office for what would become known as the first Rotary club meeting. The four men, a Lawyer, a Mining Engineer, a Coal Dealer and a Merchant Tailor (the “Original Four”), were in different businesses, but they recognized that their experience provided the organization with a unique perspective. I’m certain that they enjoyed the camaraderie of meeting together but, more importantly, they shared a desire to do good in the world.

The Original Four agreed to meet again, two weeks later, in one of the other’s offices, and to “rotate” their future meetings from office to office. Rotary was born!

Over the next two years, the fledgling organization grew in membership, focussed its efforts, and decided to undertake a community service project - rallying forces around the effort to construct public toilets in Chicago. In truth, it wasn’t entirely a philanthropic project; some have speculated that the idea of providing “comfort stations” in the downtown business core was intended to keep shoppers there longer and increase sales. But, nevertheless, the undertaking established the Rotary Club of Chicago as the first service club and the newly constructed toilets became a source of civic pride. It’s safe to say that none of the original four members, nor any of those who would join the club over the next few years, thought that they were leaving a legacy. They were wrong.

Global Literacy project in St. Marys

LFPS 'Me to We' donates to Rotary's Global Literacy Project

On Tuesday morning, the Little Falls Public School ‘Me to We’ group presented their collection of excess school bags and school supplies to the Rotary Club of St. Marys for the Global Literacy Project. Accepting the donation with great thanks were Rotarians Ron Aitken and Linda Schuyler. Pictured with Little Falls students is teacher Robin Rutherford. The Rotary Club’s Global Literacy Project originated when Rotarians from the Grand Bend club, led by Peter Twynstra, visited rural schools in the Mpumalanga Province in northeastern South Africa. This school was staffed with enthusiastic teachers and full of eager “learners”, as the students are called there. The problem was that teaching aides, like blackboards, computers, and even desks and chairs, were not to be found. The group was taken by surprise with the lack of basic supplies that we take for granted here. Not long after the group’s return home, one of the participants was horrified to see perfectly good desks being thrown into a dumpster behind a school which had recently closed in the area. She implored Peter to find a way to get these supplies over to the

South African school that they had visited. This is how ‘Literacy Project’ came to be. After much negotiation and organization, the first container of surplus school supplies, including about 20,000 books, was loaded in the spring of 2009 and shipped to the very school in South Africa where the tour had visited. Needless to say, the teachers and learners were overjoyed with all of the bounty. The books, especially, created opportunities for reading that hadn’t existed previously. Over the past decade, the Global Literacy project has grown considerably, with a total of 83 containers shipped for the benefit of children in schools in South Africa, Haiti and Guyana. The Rotary Club of St. Marys is thankful for the help of the ‘Me to We’ group at Little Falls Public School and the ‘Global Voices” group at DCVI with this project. If you have excess school supplies that you would like to donate, collection boxes will be present at Vet Purchasing, Meridian Credit Union, St. Marys Public Library, YMCA, DCVI and Little Falls until February 28th so to accommodate the next shipment which is in March.

2019 RI Convention in Hamburg Germany

Drop anchor in Hamburg

Situated on the Elbe River, Hamburg, Germany, is the third-largest port in Europe, a thriving hub of global trade. The city will host the 2019 Rotary International Convention 1-5 June. Local Rotarians are hard at work planning activities that will help you capture the moment. In the September issue of The Rotarian, you will learn more about what you can expect during your visit to Germany's gateway to the world. Register by 15 December to take advantage of the early registration discount.

Ray Bennett honoured by Rotary Club of St. Marys

We acknowledge the excellent article written about the tribute paid to Rotarian Ray Bennett in the February 7^th, 2019 issue of the St. Marys Independent. The article follows:

Ray Bennett honoured by Rotary Club

On Monday’s meeting of the Rotary Club of St. Marys, Bob Stephens gave an eloquent and fitting tribute to Ray Bennett in recognition of his three decades of service towards the realization and continued operation of the Parkview West and Parkview East developments, which include sixty-nine life lease residential dwellings for seniors.

Excerpts of Stephens’ tribute are as follows: “Dedicated and committed volunteers are ‘the coin of the realm’ for service clubs, and little can be accomplished without them. And the fact that this club successfully completes the number of important projects each year that we do is a testament to the quality of the volunteers. We Rotarians have been meeting weekly in this room for thirty years. How this room and this building became our permanent home is part of a much bigger story about how a small number of Rotarians in a small town, without capital of their own, set out to resolve what they considered to be at the time the community’s greatest need: the absence of housing for seniors.

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