Rotary Beacon for October 7, 2024 - District Governor Virginia O'Reilly
5:30 p.m. – All members and guests were arriving at Knights of Columbus Hall in Port Hope
6:06 p.m. – Meeting started by Co-President Drina Tallo welcoming everybody.
Our guests were: Virginia O’Reilly, District Governor for Rotary District 7070,
Rob Pope, Assistant Governor, Area 3, Rotary Club of Campbellford
Jeremy Taft, Assistant Governor, Area 2, Rotary Club of Trenton
Members of Northumberland-Sunrise Rotary
Sonya Chouljian, Rotary Club of Scarborough
Lorenzo and Simon – Youth Exchange Students staying in Port Hope and Campbellford
Kate Burneau, Marg Tait and Tracy Sweeney
Northumberland Sunrise Rotary Club members with our own veteran member, Jim Gilmer
6:10 p.m. – Club toast, Land acknowledgment – all by Co-President Drina Tallo. Kevin Moore continued with Grace before dinner.
6:12 p.m. – Order of tables was set, and dinner started. Our meal was catered by Lisa’s Catering from Bewdley. Our choices were roast pork, sweet potato, buns and butter, coleslaw salad, roasted carrots. As a dessert, there was a choice of pumpkin pie or apple dumpling. The meal was delicious.
Program
L - R: Denise O'Brien, President, Northumberland Sunrise Rotary Club, Virginia O'Reilly, District Governor,
Steve & Drina Tall, Co-Presidents, Port Hope Rotary Club
6:48 p.m. – Assistant Governor, Area 3, Rob Pope introduced our District Governor for 2024-2025, Virginia O’Reilly, who arrived from Toronto.
Here is her bio: (by Rob Pope)
A true visionary and Rotary leader: DG Virginia O’Reilly.
DG Virginia is proud to say she is from Cape Breton NS.
Migrating to Ontario in 1978 for education at Queen's University
In 1998 twenty years later DG Virginia was co-chairing a spring festival when she was bit by the Rotary bug.
Well, the charter president of Toronto East Rotary Bill Phalen (father of Mike Phalen) asked her to become a Rotarian and lucky for us al,l she accepted.
DG Virginia imagines achievement of goals without sacrifice and shows this through her never-ending support/involvement of the Polio Plus Project.
DG Virginia is also well known for her passion for membership and continues to leave her positive imprint.
Rotary has given DG Virginia lasting and fabulous friends and has fine tuned her Active Listening skill set.
DG Virginia has a wedding anniversary of over 40 years coming up.
Fun Fact: DG Virginia has grown up as a child fearful of black dogs. Today, DG Virginia has owned 3 black dogs. Maxie is her 3rd and current black dog.
DG Virginia was welcomed with applause by all attendees.
6:52 p.m. – DG Virginia O’Reilly started her presentation with lovely assistance on the computer from Lorenzo, who was moving slides for her.
Her presentation started with a theme for 2024-2025 Rotary Year – The Magic of Rotary, and how we came up with this theme. Doing small things in community (helping people in need around us or larger projects like installing water filtration systems in 3rd World countries) will create a real magic – The Magic of Rotary.
Her governing goals are:
- Grow membership – very important!! Every club loses 15% of its members every year, and without them no magic will happen.
- Continue Polio Plus Campaign – The goal is to eradicate Polio worldwide. New cases are popping up due to geopolitical situations around the world (Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan…). “Plus” in the name of this campaign stands for wider health scanning of population for other diseases such as Ebola, Yellow Fewer or distribution of mosquito nets and Vitamin A. An early detection is the best prevention!
- Grow Rotary Foundation – especially through matching donations. More projects need to be done to make the magic happen.
She also spoke about healing the divided world through Positive Peace (May Peace Prevail) and peace through fellowship. If we show that we believe in peace, that will start the transformation within us and around us.
District 7070 coming up events:
- Foundation Walk – Newmarket on October 6.
- Celebration of World Polio Day – October 18th – LIVE from the Rotary Global Classroom at Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario
- 2024 Magic of Rotary District Conference – October 25th to 27th in Alliston. It will include inspiring speakers, great entertainment and will allow us to connect with Rotary friends and friends to be.
- 2025 RI International Convention – June 22nd to 25th in Canadian location!!! – Calgary.
Virginia also mentioned the Rotary Leadership Institute – a great place to learn about Rotary. Many seminars are happening online via Zoom.
In conclusion, she asked us all to tell the story of our own Magic of Rotary experience.
- A member of Sunrise Rotary Club shared a story about improving hospital entrance by planting and maintaining a garden around the hospital sign.
- Ron Tuttle told us a story about planting 90 trees with 15 volunteers in a Port Hope park.
- Steve Tallo shared his story about running a food booth at Port Hope Fair and raising over $5,000 thanks to all of the volunteers.
- Linda Goldie shared with all of us her experience of bringing water filters to remote villages in Laos and how this one little thing changed the life of the whole village.
- Virginia asked Kathy and Bob Wallace to share their story about a trip to India to distribute polio vaccines to children in need. It was a very powerful and impactful experience.
Virgina’s point of this exercise was for us all to understand that the Magic of Rotary is all around us!
Drina & Steve Tallo, on behalf of the Rotary Club of Port Hope, and Dennise O’Brian, on behalf of the Northumberland Sunrise Rotary Club, accepted a Rotary banner from Virginia.
Kevin Moore thanked District Governor Virginia for her visit and wished her a great year as Governor.
7.20 p.m. - Club Updates
Ron Tuttle updated the club on tree planting project and two upcoming projects for the Club. (Veterans’ banners on lamp posts in the downtown core and sponsoring the ROLLS bus for people with mobility issues for the month of December)
Kevin Moore presented our Inbound Youth Exchange Student with our club banner to take home and present to his host club after his exchange. Kevin also updated club on wellbeing of our exchange student, Hailey, in Finland. She is doing well, improving her Finnish every day, has just changed host families, her favorite food is sausage soup, she is going to visit Finish countryside in upcoming weeks.
Kevin is also working along with two other church leaders on a project that focuses on placement of local seniors in need of housing with families who have extra space. There is a huge problem that needs creative solutions!
Drina Tallo updated us on an E-mail from John Davidson, regarding a Port Hope budget discussion, and his plea to all of us about citizens’ responsibility to be involved in municipal matters.
In the end of the meeting, John Mowatt collected Happy Bucks. Some of our Happy Bucks highlights are:
- Rotary Foundation Walk in Newmarket- what a great experience!
- Thankfulness of members for Virginia being here
- Dad’s 80th birthday celebration
- Upcoming Thanksgiving, spending time with family, grandkids…
- Meeting Virginia in person
- The Tallos’ House is finally on the market and a showing is already booked
- Wonderful church visit
- Successful Tree Planting project
- Just happy to be here.
L - R: Jeremy Taft, Assistant Governor, Simon from Denmark, hosted by Cambellford Rotary Club,
Lorenzo from Italy, hosted by Port Hope Rotary Club, Assistant Governor Rob Pope
7.40 p.m. – Co-President Drina Tallo thanked everyone for coming and closed the meeting with the singing of O Canada.
Next Meeting
Our next club meeting will be on October 21, 2024 at the Knights of Columbus Hall. Social time: 5:30 p.m., Dinner at 6:00 p.m.
- PDG Bob Wallace will have tutorial presentations about ClubRunner software.
- Please come dressed up for Halloween!!!
- We will also be discussing the upcoming Christmas Market.
- Susan Rafuse has door duty. Kevin Moore will introduce the speaker. John Mowat will thank the speaker. Ron Tuttle will collect Happy Bucks. Olga Chernuck will be the scribe. Ron Tuttle will be the Beacon editor.