Attendance: 12 in person (including Dorothy Evans, guest of Basil) and one via Zoom.

                    Total 13 - 12 members and one guest

 

President Courtney started the meeting with a ring of the Rotary bell.

 

Anthem: Frank Allison

 

Toast to The Queen, Canada, and Rotary. President Courtney

- Barry encouraged us to support the Foundation Walk on Sept. 25^th with our pledges and passed around a pledge sheet.

 

- Basil announced that the Scarborough Rotary Ribfest raised $30,000, and our club’s portion will be $5,017.91, which are about half of the amounts from the last Ribfest before the pandemic. Nonetheless, it was a great start to a return to fund-raising for our club

 

- Basil also announced that the Markham Sunrise Rotary Club, which our club helped to get started, is having a 25^th Anniversary Gala Evening on October 1^st, 2022.

 

Saifoo introduced our guest speaker, Sean Ho, and Sean spoke on “Making Funeral Arrangements Ahead of Time (Part 2)”

 

When Sean spoke to our club previously as Part 1, he didn’t cover what needs to be done when one passes away. He began his talk by explaining that there are three basic locations where such an event can take place: at home, in the hospital and in a senior living facility. Sean took questions during his talk and added a 4^th location, being on vacation, including outside of the country.

 

In all of these locations, there is necessary paperwork involved. The first document would be the doctor’s Medical Certificate of Death. The second document would be the Coroner’s Certificate of Death. The third document would be the Transfer Form for the body. In the different locations, these documents come into play in different ways. The most straightforward would be the hospital location where there are doctors available to sign the Medical Certificate of Death; however, the family then has only 24 hours to remove the body, and there are no refrigerated drawers for the bodies as in the movies. The bodies are usually moved to the basement of the hospital, where it is cooler. In the senior living facility, 9-1-1 is called, and the police arrive and check the records to confirm that it was an expected death. The Coroner used to attend, but the current procedure is for the coroner to sign the Coroner’s Certificate of Death and the Transfer Form for the body based upon the patient’s medical records. Death in a private home situation is dealt with quite differently. Once a body is found, and the police arrive, the police carry out a full search of the home in order to determine whether or not there is evidence of foul play, such as weapons, drugs, etc. Only then is the coroner called, and it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for the body to be transferred to the funeral home.

 

Sean explained that for deaths of Canadian residents outside of Canada, the cost is usually covered by insurance. He highly recommended Travel Protection Insurance at a one-time cost of about $600.

 

Sean then spent some time on Funeral Pre-Planning. There are so many options as to what type of funeral a deceased could have, together with a huge variation in cost, that a pre-planning session is highly recommended. The cheapest funeral would be about $2,000. The pre-payment of funerals is held by a government-monitored insurance company so that pre-payments are protected should the funeral home go out of business.

 

Sean fielded many questions, and then Mike Mushet thanked Sean for a very interesting and informative talk.