CURRENTS July 2023

CURRENTS is the official newsletter of the Credit River PROBUS Club. It is published monthly and emailed to members to keep them abreast of club activities and to promote the club’s central objectives. Submissions are welcome as are new ideas and should be emailed to Nancy Hori, nancy.hori@sympatico.ca.

President’s Message

The first thing I have to say is that after careful consideration by your Management Committee, membership dues will increase to seventy-five dollars for full members and forty dollars for members-in-waiting effective October 1, 2023. You may well ask why. The simple answer is that if we stay at sixty dollars per year our membership revenue will no longer cover our increased costs and even with some money now in the bank,  in two years we will be broke. Our anticipated twelve-month cost to run the club for 2023/2024 is about twenty thousand dollars. Eighty percent of that number goes to room rental and speaker fees. We have looked at what other clubs are paying for room rental and we are very much in line and  indeed cheaper than some potential venues without the ambiance that we get at the golf club. The only significant way to reduce the room rental cost is to go to somewhere which may be cheaper, such as a church or municipal hall and do everything  ourselves. We would have to put out chairs, put them away, make & serve refreshments, clean up, provide our own screen and microphone etc. This club is better than that, so that is a nonstarter.

I particularly enjoyed our June speaker from Canadian Warplane Heritage, John Bullen about “Life aboard a Lancaster Bomber in World War II”. It was certainly not glamourous or a picnic as shown by the number of Bomber Command aircrew that did not return. We owe our freedom to these men. Again John and Lee thank you for lining up another excellent speaker.

Last month I thanked all the volunteers, who contribute to making the club work. There are two ladies not  in the Management Committee, who between them are the online face of our club. Nancy Hori, the editor of CURRENTS and Julie Kinkaid, our webmaster. They both put in a lot of hours to make our online presence  so good. Nancy in particular has her own way of embellishing the plain text that anybody sends her with lots of colour and illustration. Julie is the one who among other things, adds some jokes and cartoons to our website, some of which come from members. There are some especially good ones. Look at FYE on the Club website. Nancy and Julie, a big thank you to both of you.

Tim Peterson has resigned his position as Events co-chair so it all now falls under Anne Fabierkiewicz. I have assured Anne that we will assist her in any way we can. If Anne requests help, you may get a tap on the shoulder. As to future events, we will be having a Fall Colour Drive in early October, details to follow.

I am still looking for members to be the jester of the month to tell a joke.
Enjoy the summer!
John Burrows

You can find this month’s complete issue and past editions of CURRENTS here.

Read your copy of CURRENTS or see the web to find out more about  Activities,  Events,  and Travel in our club.

Direct comments about CURRENTS to Nancy Hori (nancy.hori@sympatico.ca). If you need to be sent another copy of CURRENTS please email crprobus@gmail.com.