Kemptville Rotary celebrate 90 years of service

On a Monday evening in September, 1934, a group of local businessmen gathered at the Town Hall on Water Street in Kemptville to discuss a major move that would result in 90 years of service to the community of Kemptville and surrounding district. The men were members of the Kemptville 100 Service Club, first established in the village in 1929, and they were considering transitioning from that organisation to Rotary. Earlier in the year, members of the 100 Club had heard a talk on Rotary by a local resident, James Morton, and had been impressed by his description of the Club and its work.

So, on that September evening in 1934, 120 members of Rotary clubs from Ottawa, Hull, Smiths Falls and Brockville had come to Kemptville to help those interested in forming a new Rotary chapter. Cyril Washington, W. B. George, Os Beamish and Lorne Reddick, all members of the 100 Club, had made an application to form the new Rotary Club, and by the end of the meeting at the Town Hall that night, the decision was made. As Pam Gordon noted in her account of the meeting: “Rev. H.L. Morrison of the Kemptville 100 Service Club moved a motion: ‘We here and now proceed to form a Rotary Club in Kemptville.’ A.C. Thompson seconded the motion and stated ‘Kemptville needed Rotary because we want to tell the world what kind of town we have and if we are to form a Rotary Club we must do it now.’”

When a provisional meeting was advertised for September 28, thirty-five individuals attended at the

Allen House hotel at the corner of Prescott and Asa. It looked like Rotary could be off to a promising start. And so it proved. Elections were held for the new Executive on October 12, 1934, with Cy Washington becoming President, W.B. George, Secretary, J.A. Roke, Treasurer, and T.A. Robinson and Bert Whaley were elected Directors. At the Charter meeting of the Kemptville Rotary Club on November 23, at what the local newspaper called "one of the largest banquets of its kind ever held in Kemptville”, guests from fourteen Rotary Clubs watched the Charter presented to the new chapter.

Since then, this region has been blessed with so many different initiatives undertaken by Rotary for the benefit of their community.

Anna Rochon of Kemptville Rotary named just a few of these:

“One of the things that we do is ensure that we provide four $1,000 bursaries to graduating students from local high schools. We work with the Kemptville Youth Centre in all of their fundraising efforts. We host a special meal event at Camp Merrywood, we provide funds to purchase smoke free stoves to families in Central America, and we took a leadership role in raising money in this community for the people in Ukraine. There are many times that we assist community groups with their efforts – pancake breakfasts, Kemptville Live, and parades. Look around at any special event in our community and you will likely find a Rotary member making a difference.”

On an international level, Rotary has been involved in an immunisation program cont'd on page 2

THOMAS M. BYRNE

cont'd from front page against polio for decades, helping to reduce the number of cases worldwide by 99.9%, from 350,000 cases in 1988. The recent outbreaks in Gaza recently were remarkable and disappointing, given the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative thus far. The Short Term Exchange Program by Rotary is another initiative with an international focus. STEP is a short term student summer exchange between families. The student lives with a foreign student’s family for approximately one month and then both students return to Canada, where the foreign student lives with the student’s family for another month. This year, Gavin Cloutier, a youth from North Grenville, embarked on a transformative journey through the program, spending three weeks immersed in the picturesque landscapes of Switzerland. In turn, his Swiss counterpart, Aaron, discovered life in Eastern Ontario.

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