past speakers

John Farrow introduced Michelle this morning.  She has lived all across Canada, worked in hospitals and with the RCMP, now runs her own business “Ace Nutrition”.

• Michelle has a connection to Loving Spoonful – gives 3% of her daily revenue to them
• Her goal is to help prevent health issues and getting Kingston Healthy
• Michelle's website is http://acenutrition.ca/

John Farrow introduced Greg Podmore.  Greg is a member of the Rotary Club of Grand Prairie Alberta, and his club has been involved in a large Guatemala literacy project since 2004.  https://www.guatemalaliteracy.org/

Greg told us about the high need for their program among indigenous children in Guatemala.  Four out of five are illiterate.  Parents cannot afford to send them to school.  This is a large grass roots project that receives $200,000 annually from the Rotary Foundation.  There are also large donations from around the world.  Rotary works with an organization in Guatemala called Cooperative for Education.  It all started in Cincinnati by two young men who were teachers in Guatemala who thought that text books could be provided to students there.  600 Rotary Clubs around the world are now involved.  It started with text books, and then expanded to computers.  Children find the books to be exciting.  One third of indigenous people cannot read or write.  Teachers receive two years of training.  First, a story is read to the children.  Then when they understand it, they take the story back and put on puppet shows or act out the stories.  Later they learn to write their own stories. 

At first, the adults didn’t understand why their children needed this.  The books include learning about math, social studies, science and Spanish.  60% of mid level jobs require a knowledge of computers.  95% of the individuals who go through the program are able to get employment. 

There is a sustainability plan, and the schools also put in money.

RISE is a youth development program that starts in grade 7.  Students often leave school after grade 6.  Students are chosen in grades 5 or 6 for RISE.  They look for tough and determined kids, and not necessarily the brightest ones.  They are also children whose parents cannot afford their education.  Without this program, 95% will never finish high school.  They will go to work farming like their parents did. 

The Rise program is much more than books.  They gather monthly for training in things like interviewing for jobs.  They also tour places where employment may be located.  They come together to see different ways to improve their communities.  Each student has a counsellor.  They learn about good citizenship, and volunteering in their communities to help needy people.  It’s all about breaking the cycle of poverty.

How can you get involved?  Rotary Clubs can sponsor a class or a student in the Rise program.  Canada has also matched the TRF grants.

The next trip to Guatemala is planned for February 2021. 

Greta spoke about attending a Friendship Exchange in Guatemala.  John Gale spoke about a local group of Rotarians that attends the Uniendo Conference in Central America, and asked whether this project is linked to the Guatemalan stove project.  (They are not.) 

The question was asked whether they are mostly dealing with just rural populations or also cities.  They are involved in both, but mainly in the western highlands.

Heather Nogrady offered our thanks with a virtual loaf of bread.  It was interesting to hear about how this project evolved, and to see photos of children who were so obviously happy and proud, and that said a lot.

There are some 4,000 students who participate in the Food Sharing program in schools. Many of these children receive breakfast, lunch and a snack every school day between September and June. My program, Isthmus, bridges the gap between Friday and Monday for these children giving them a hamper of food for the weekend. With COVID-19, numbers are growing and will continue to do so.
When the schools closed, these programs had to rethink how to get food to these children (and their families). The FSP and Isthmus partnered sharing resources and ideas and, with the help of the Limestone District and Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District school boards, and with other partners like Lionhearts and Stock Transportation, we developed a new model. The education boards sought permission from families to share their addresses, phone numbers and number of children in each family. They have subsequently, through their Principals, identified families in need and received the necessary permissions. As of 3:00 pm today, almost 400 families in 31 schools have asked to participate in our food distribution program. Again, this number is sure to grow as situations become more precarious.

We held our first distribution on Friday handing out 226 hampers to 167 families. This test involved the 5 schools that my program serves. Those schools are Rideau Heights PS, JG Simcoe PS, Molly Brant PS, Centennial PS and St. Francis of Assisi CS. Food was purchased or donated on Tuesday and Wednesday. Hampers were packed on Thursday and Friday. The food was delivered between 2:30 pm and 5:30 pm on Friday. Families receiving the food were so thankful!

For this delivery, the hampers included the following items: one block of cheese, one litre of milk, broccoli, a small bag of carrots, 4 apples, 4 bananas, 4 oranges, 2 boxes of mac and cheese, a can of pasta sauce, a package of spaghetti, 2 cups of apple sauce, 2 juice boxes, a loaf of bread and 2 packages of oatmeal. Not enough food to get the family through a whole week but we assume they have other sources of food.

The bread is donated by Cobbs bakery through Lionhearts. The rest of the food is purchased at wholesale prices from Deodatos, Grants No Frills and the Wholesale Club.

Going forward, the plan is to run the Isthmus program (5 schools) one week and the Food Sharing Project the next (26 schools) alternating between the two.
Paul Elsley, Rotary Club of Kingston
P.S. Since I first wrote this note, the number of schools and families has gone up.

Guest Speaker, Mark Blakey, Past Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Ontario Shirley Blakey, Past Grand Chaplain Rick Fiedorec, President, Rotary Club of Cataraqui-Kingston, who thanked Mark and Shirley, presenting them with a loaf of bread, the club tradition

President-Elect Ana Sutherland introduced Mark. Ana had met with Shirley Blakey, who suggested that our club consider using the Odd Fellows Hall for meetings. That led to the Odd Fellows Hall becoming our meeting place earlier this year, and then on May 21st. It seemed a natural step to invite Mark and Shirley so that we could learn about our hosts and their organization. We discovered many parallels of values, fellowship, and service between Odd Fellows and Rotary. 

• Affordable Meat for Shelters –  Loving Spoonful now has an app launched with local butchers to provide 50% off meat delivered to shelters.
• Grow a Row Program (private gardeners set aside a row of their garden) – Lots of participants and greens delivered directly to agencies.
• Microgreens with Micro Gardeners – programs in daycares with kids 3-5:  singing, stories, growing plants from seeds to connect children with food.
• The GROW project – 17 school gardens teaching over 660 students a year about the food system, cultivation, collaborations and community.  Four more gardens are being added this year, so they will reach over 800 kids.  A year from now their Trillium grant ends, so we may see Mara again……
• Kingston Community Garden Network – expanding and now including orchards.  C-K Rotary has helped support these initiatives.
• Circles Around the Table – a 16 week process to help folks plan to get out of poverty.  Loving Spoonful holds weekly meetings to support the implementation of the program.
• Cooking Connections – a Mental Health and Social Inclusion program including good food!  This has taken a Clinical program from Queen’s and added the sharing of a healthy meal and casual community.
• The Rest of the Menu – lots of different cooking classes:  Autism Ontario; Manly Meals; cross-cultural; ReStart, youth diversion; Medicine Wheel cooking (native language education around food); One Roof (street-involved young women).

I’ve nominated Mary Farrar to receive a Paul Harris Award for her many and varied contributions, that align with education, health, conservation, community building, and reconciliation with our Indigenous friends.

Professionally, Mary was an elementary school teacher. She retired at 55, and after that became very deeply involved in our community. 

Mary moved into the city (from a hobby farm) 10 years ago and it was only then that she began cycling. She has been part of the initiative to get all the bike lanes you see now. This supports the physical health of our people as well as health of the environment by encouraging biking and reducing carbon emissions.

She was instrumental in getting support from her city councilor and then from city staff to create the Inner Harbor Heritage Trail. With an initial dream of having a trail from the LaSalle Causeway to Kingston Mills on the west side of the Cataraqui River, our city staff suggested that she get a group together to work on possible plans. She was able to get the involvement of some influential citizens, and it went from there. In the end, staff went beyond the original suggestion and proposed that the trail come down the east side of the river as well. Council voted unanimously in favor of the project and completion is planned within the next 20 years. For Canada’s 150^th, Council approved that the Inner Harbor Heritage trail be part of a connection between the downtown and the Trans Canada Trail. This connecting trail is now complete except for one inaccessible section at the intersection of Division and John Counter Blvd. Mary and her colleagues are working with city staff to ensure that a pedestrian and cycling overpass will be put in place to solve this problem.

Mary is the President of Friends of the Kingston Inner Harbour. The trail has made the Douglas Fluhrer Park more accessible to people in the north end of Kingston. Before, they were cut off by the railroad. She taught for many years at the old Kingscourt Public School and has an affection for the people in that neighborhood. She strives to do things that will help to create social equity. 

The Kingston Inner Harbour is lively with a large number and variety of animals, including reptiles and birds. With Mary’s leadership, the Douglas Fluhrer Park has become an active place of learning, of projects to support the ecosystem, and activities that connect the settlers’ community to the Indigenous community. There have been organized family days, and many special events. Mary was aware early on in the project to support the turtle population that our Indigenous people place importance on turtles in their cultural beliefs and teaching. She has included The Mohawk Grandmothers’ Council, and The Caretakers of Belle Island. Activities at the park have included teaching about the science of turtles, and about Indigenous learning. On one occasion there was a blanket exercise held in the park, in cooperation with Four Directions and Peace Quest.

By itself the turtles project is notable. It has been going for three years now. Volunteers monitor turtle behavior and cover the nests to protect them from predators. Mary has been able to obtain grants from the Kingston Community Foundation to coordinate the volunteers, and from Trailhead to connect paddlers with the turtles and from the Community Foundation to hire students to help with educational event coordination and improve the quality of the citizen-science research they are engaged in. As well, she has obtained financial support from notable foundations outside of Kingston. Partnerships are in place with Queen's University, Carleton University, and several charitable organizations interested in turtle preservation and turtle habitat. Mary herself has been out snorkeling in the Inner Harbour to try to determine where the turtles come back to hibernate. It is known where they bask in the sun, and where they lay, but not where they hibernate. It is necessary to learn these things as part of a long-term demographic study of turtle habitat there.

On another note, most recently, Mary has begun to make the public aware of the lack of dental care provided to people in long term care. Her husband Edward has been permanently hospitalized at KGH, due to dementia, which also makes communication difficult. Mary had no idea that there is just no time for the staff to provide adequate dental hygiene, or she would have been providing this herself. Ed’s teeth were falling out, and in the end, this led to him having all his remaining teeth removed, due to neglect. Mary took her story to the Whig Standard, and the full story was reported. She stresses that she places no blame on the nursing staff, but since then, she has taken the first steps to bring about change. 

Mary is known affectionately to many as “The Turtle Lady”, so my friend Paulette Bruce who does traditional beadwork, and who is here today, designed and made something to recognize that before she receives the award.

Doug van der Horden, nominated by Ana Sutherland

Doug van der Horden is a child and youth worker and Adolescent Care Worker at Ernestown Secondary School in Odessa.  Children and youth benefit from his work. He is providing clothes in a back-pack as a comfort item during the first point of police intervention.

He works to raise awareness of human trafficking (see The Real Deal on Human Trafficking, Kingston Whig Standard) and is cofounder of the Alliance for Action to help victims.

Raymond Vos, nominated by Bill Gray

Ray has helped many in Kingston to understand the challenges faced by many people in Kenya. He and Irwin Streight presented to Rotary Club of Cataraqui-Kingston telling us about the work and its impact.

Jacob Gardner, our guest speaker, October 2, 2018, is a Radiologist at KGH and is involved in the Ranked Ballot initiative and is here to tell us about it.

I went to Ottawa when I was 17 as part of Adventures in Citizenship.

We are currently use a first-past-the-post system for civic elections in Kingston. This splits the vote across those running on the popular issue.

A ranked-ballot system is being proposed in which voters rank all the candidates, first to last, and the race is run over and over, each time eliminating the last person, until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.

This sets up for a more civil election.

You shouldn’t have to vote "the least of the evils." There is no strategic voting with ranked ballot– you don’t have to vote for someone you don’t want.

The ranked ballot system allows newer candidates to thrive.

The referendum question will be on the ballot of the upcoming mayoral and district rep election.

For more information, see: Ranked Ballots--City of Kingston.

There has been an amazing growth in social awareness and in the number of individuals to whom The Alzheimer Society provides service. Often for talks such as this she brings a family—Bob and Laurel—to share their story, but 7am is too early! Laurel is the caregiver and her husband Bob has dementia. They say hello and may come to visit on some other occasion.

The Alzheimer Society in Kingston was started in 1981 by volunteers. Some founders are still involved. Last year recognized need for extended services in KFL&A; there are now satellites in Sharbot Lake, Northbrook, and Napanee. People shouldn’t have to drive an hour for services; services should be available close to home. The board has generously supported this expansion. Funding comes from grants, the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) and fund raising.