Scarborough Revitalization Project

Rotary Club of North Scarborough
Rota-Teller
11 June 2014

Anthem            Carol Nicholson
Grace Arthur   Retnakaran
Toast to the Queen & Canada   President Rocco

Attendance:
18  (including 3 guests)

Announcements:

President Rocco read a ‘thank you’ letter from Operation Eyesight.

Carolyn Nicholson read a ‘thank you’ letter from the student who we sent to Adventures in Citizenship.

Gordon Brown had 3 announcements:
1. The World Cup is starting and apparently England is favoured in Gordon’s somewhat biased opinion;
 2. The Charter Party is this Friday and he still needs meal selections from everyone; and
3. All members should be prepared to roast President Rocco at next week's meeting.

Gerd Wengler reported on his training for his 50 km walk. He is also taking a break from Hope Air in order to fly animals in the Pilot & Paws program. Supposedly, he will be flying an owl too, because he thinks it will be a hoot!

Basil Dias reminded us to set aside June 28^th to July 1^st for the Rotary Ribfest!

Jack Holman announced that Tom Milton has resigned his membership, reluctantly.  This is because he is joining the Rotary Club of Fenelon Falls and cannot be a member of two Rotary clubs at the same time. Tom will continue to support our TV Auction though.

Arthur Retnakaran announced that he attended his former Rotary Club in Sault Ste. Marie for a celebration of his wife’s life, and brought back a banner from the Sault Ste. Marie Club.

Marbelous Draw was won, and lost, by Basil Dias

The fill-in Sgt-at-Arms Barry Smith asked for Happy Bucks, firstly from Gerd who was listed as Assistant Sgt-at-Arms on the duty roster. Gerd was happy to donate and submit to Barry’s bloodless coup with respect to taking over the Sgt-at-Arms duties for the day.

Further Happy Bucks were received for:

Peter Masson’s son Paul's Ride to Conquer Cancer and the success of the Paul Harris Scholarship Awards dinner.

Barry donated for his son, Kyle’s, climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro in July in the footsteps of Past President Emmanuel.

Jim Boyko was happy after two weeks in Paris, France including a visit to Vimy Ridge.

Frank was happy to be back after 3 months away.

Other happy bucks were collected leading to a fair haul for the day.

Program: The Revitalization of Scarborough

Julia (our unofficial member) introduced James Burchell to talk about our partnership to elevate the name of Scarborough!

James outlined his vision for Scarborough. His campaign is to change the perception of Scarborough through various means and by partnering with other interested organizations, such as Rotary. In his campaign he is using the question “Why do you love Scarborough?” in order to obtain specific responses from Scarborough residents.

James says that we are considered to be a poor cousin to other sections of Toronto by being referred to as Scarberia. Scarborough politicians recently took offense to this derogatory reference to Scarborough.

[Editor’s Note: The Urban Dictionary defines Scarberia as: Found in the east end of Toronto. An entire city (600,000+) of hoodlums, scumbags, druggies, gangsters etc. Also known as Scarborough, Scar‑town, Scarlem. Was notorious in the early 90's as the crime capital of Canada. The population is generally low‑brow.]

James says that it’s up to Scarborough residents to change this inaccurate perception of Scarborough.

By way of his own background, James emigrated to Scarborough from East York, but has now resided in Scarborough for 25 years. He was laid off by the OMERS pension plan about 22 months ago, and this gave him the opportunity to contribute his time to the Scarborough Revitalization initiative.

James is interested in people. He feels that people need people, and this is what community should be all about. So, he created a grassroots movement to show Scarborough in a positive light.

His slogan is “Sell-abrate Scarborough” (using the amended spelling of ‘celebrate’).

His Scarborough MPP helped James to partner with school boards, initially with the elementary school board. Students were asked the question, “Why do you love Scarborough?”, and provided responses in the form of prose and artwork which will be compiled by James into a book to help promote a positive view of Scarborough.

He will next move into the high schools with the similar question, “What inspires you in Scarborough?”

James says that we need to remember our roots, including the neighbourhoods within the greater Scarborough community, such as Agincourt, Wexford, the Beaches, Bendale, and other localized neighbourhoods that together make up the larger Scarborough community. Amalgamation has threatened to blot out the identities of these communities, as well as Scarborough as a whole.

James is hoping to partner with our club and other organizations to reverse this tendency to underplay and actually insult our Scarborough communities. He is already partnering with all three levels of government.

He feels that we should all do our part to get the word out that Scarborough is Awesome!

James concluded his talk with a slide show showing some of the students’ prose and artwork setting out, “Why I Love Scarborough”.

Roland List thanked James for a very interesting and informative talk.

His presentation is available on this link
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7nc9yz0a2955uou/140611_001.MP3

Meeting was terminated by President Rocco