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District 6330
The story of the
Rotary Clubs of District 6330 is an exemplary record of Rotarians
serving humanity through their support of numerous projects on the
local, national, and international front. Indeed, the history of
these Rotary Clubs over the past eight decades is intertwined with
the history of their communities and of the world. The ideal of
Service above Self remains a constant in a changing world. Of the
sixty-three clubs now in District 6330, forty-four are in Zone 22.
John Eberhard , long-time member of the Rotary Club of London, Chair
and former Chief Administrative Officer of the Canadian Rotary
Committee for International Development (CRCID) served as Canadian
Director of Rotary International, for the years 2003-05.
Club Service
One of the
treasures of this District is the opportunity to support the famous
Stratford Festival Theatre with its links to its Shakespearean
counterpart in England. One of the Clubs in Stratford is called the
Rotary Club of Festival City. This Club was chartered in 1995 with a
membership which included the first twelve female Rotarians in that
city. This busy Club has found the time to support the local Red
Cross Breakfast Program, which provided over sixty thousand
breakfasts for children in 2001.
The Rotary Club of Goderich (1962)
provided District 6330 with its first female District Governor, Judy
Crawford. This Club worked with the city to develop a recreational
beach called Rotary Cove.
In 1974, the Rotary Club of Port
Elgin (1938) published a history of their community titled
Reminiscences. This Club and the neighbouring Rotary Club of
Southampton (1938) has a long list of service achievements in all
four Avenues of Service, including jointly purchasing a police
service vehicle.
The unique Rotary Club of Thornbury
and Clarksburg (1938) is a venture of two towns near each other who
agreed to form a joint club if six months of dinner meetings were
held in each town during the year.
The small but active Rotary Club of
Tobermory ( 1956) operates a full Rotary program and was
incorporated as a trust in 2002. Currently,there are twelve
members.
The Rotary Club of Meaford (1937)
has an extensive list of notable community contributions,
participating in both funding and volunteering in the grand Rotary
way. Commitments to the Meaford Hospital included financing of the
first X-ray unit, and the Club furnished a hospital room dedicated
to Paul Harris.
Vocational Service
Most clubs are
involved in Rotary-sponsored school scholarship programs. In
addition, the Rotary Club of London East (1955) sponsors a Seminar
for Tomorrow’s Leaders which is open to candidates from other clubs
in the District.
The Rotary Club of Watford (1939)
has a record of supporting the vocation of farming. They work with
4-H clubs and have sponsored twenty-five annual Rotary carnivals,
calf club shows, and sales events.
The 1915 charter issued to the
Rotary Club of London kicked off a long string of Rotary
accomplishments. This Club has produced five district governors.
Their high school scholarship and student support programs began in
1945, and they prepared the way for the chartering of an Interact
club in 1963. They contributed major funding and major input for
facilities for the Ontario Society for Crippled Children, the Easter
Seals program, and the London and District Crippled Children’s
Treatment Centre.
The 1915 charter members of the
London Club included Canadian business leaders whose names will
bring back fond memories to some Rotarians – manufacturer T. P.
McCormick, Robert Wallace of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes
Co., Hume Cronyn of Huron & Erie Mortgage Co., J. K. McDermid of the
O-Pee-Chee Gum Co. and A. E. Silverwood of dairy fame.
Community Service
Back in 1922, Clubs in this District
were doing grassroots work in helping crippled children, which
developed into the Ontario Easter Seals Society. This Society has
since restructured and is independent of the Rotary connection.
The Stratford Club (1922) introduced
annual Dragon Boat festivals to the District in 1996 and was
joined by the St. Mary’s and Sarnia Clubs; the District now has a
popular community-sporting event, which increases awareness of
Rotary. These events also raise significant funding for Rotary
community service projects in the medical, sports, and civic
categories and the idea has spread to clubs in other districts.
The Rotary Club of Glencoe (1945)
spearheaded a drive raising one hundred and seventy thousand
dollarsto restore the 1904 Grand Trunk and Wabash Railway Station to
provide a downtown venue for special events.
For a number of years, the main
endeavour of The Rotary Club of Lion’s Head (1954) has been the
renovation and maintenance of the Eastnor Township Hall, now known
as Rotary Hall, which is a centre for many community events.
Thanks to the Rotary Club of
Mitchell (1997), the local food bank never runs out of food. Food
items are placed in brightly coloured and labelled bags on the
related shelves at the local grocery store. People buy these bags
and place them in a bin at the store. Rotarians are responsible for
filling the bags each week.
The Rotary Club of Paisley (1928)
stages a Country Music Weekend each May and operates a campground
along the local river.
The Rotary Club of St. Mary’s (1925)
is “Stonetown’s” senior service club and leading volunteer
organization. The Club has contributed to projects like
constructing Ontario’s largest swimming pool and large residential
complexes for seniors. They provided seed money for the
establishment of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in
St. Mary’s, a twenty-seven-acre sports complex.
The Rotary Club of London is a
longtime co-sponsor of the annual Sportsmen’s Dinner which has so
far generated more than one million dollars for the Thames Valley
Treatment Centre, a cancer treatment facility. This Club is also a
contributor to many local recreational facilities for children.
The Rotary Club of Tara (1938) has
contributed to many community projects and to the London Children’s
Hospital through successful fundraising annual yard sales, beef
barbecues, hockey draws, and its Rotary Winterama event. The Club’s
centennial project is the purchase of 3.5 acres of land, which will
become the Tara Rotary Riverside Park.
International Service
The Student
Exchange and Group Study Exchange programs are well supported in
District 6330, as is PolioPlus and The Rotary Foundation. Most
clubs have projects in countries around the globe.
The Lion’s Head Club makes donations
to farms in Korea and Israel for drilling water wells and procuring
farm machinery.
Three members of the Rotary Club of
Sarnia (1928) travelled to India to participate in Rotary
International’s Polio Eradication Project.
The Rotary Club of Sarnia
Bluewaterland (1990) has two giant forty-by-twenty foot flags, one
Canadian and one American, on eighty-foot flagpoles on the Canadian
side of the cross-border Bluewater Bridge. They are matched by
similar flags put up on the American side.
Stratford Rotarians have a
wheelchair project underway in Zimbabwe, a micro-loan project in
Zambia, and infrastructure projects in Guatemala.
The Rotary Club of Wiarton’s (1938)
project for Cameroon improved livestock breeding, crop enhancement,
and provided economic training.
The Rotary Club of London Hyde
Park--LHP for short--formed in 1997, has already made a number of
contributions to the Rotary world. Imagine the reception children
in Uganda gave to this Club’s gift of soccer balls and dictionaries!
The Rotary Club of London has
undertaken projects in remote places in Nigeria, Haiti, and India.
The Club’s pledge to the first PolioPlus Campaign was one hundred
thousand dollars. |
