to this week's meeting ofThe Rotary E-Club of Canada One
For the week beginning July 27, 2026
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Complete the form for a make-up!
Please leave a donation to assist our club to do Rotary's good works!
to this week's meeting of
The Rotary E-Club of Canada One
For the week beginning
July 27, 2026
Scroll down to enjoy the content!
Complete the form for a make-up!
The Rotary theme for 2025-26 -
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Greeter this week
Rotarian Judy
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Inspirational moment
Larry Lunsford - Rotary International President-elect (2027-28)
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Canadiana
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Input from our guests and members
Members and guests attending our weekly meetings are very important to us. Based on your comments we are able to produce many more educational, inspiring, and entertaining weekly meetings.
Would you please send us your comments?
*** A note for anyone wondering how the Catch the Ace went on Thursday, July 23, 2026 in Sarnia, Ontario *** AN UPDATE ON KIVA.ORG |
Ma. Jenefy's story (and how RECCO is helping through kiva.org)
- She requested a PHP 15,000 loan through NWTF to buy feeds and other supplies to raise her pigs.
- This loan is facilitated by Kiva’s Lending Partner, Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF).
Ma. Jenefy has been sustaining her business activities through her own efforts with the help of the loans from NWTF. She dreams of saving enough to secure the future of her family.
- This money helps to buy feeds and other supplies to raise her pigs.
- The loan is special because it helps Ma. Jenefy grow her business.
For those unfamiliar with Kiva.org –
here is more about this loan –
Lending Partners are local organizations working in communities to vet borrowers, provide services, and administer loans on the ground.
Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 that provides microfinance and capacity-building services to low-income women across underserved communities in the Philippines, with the goal of improving livelihoods and promoting long-term economic empowerment.
Through a microfinance approach inspired by the Grameen model, NWTF offers group-based and individual loans to support women entrepreneurs in starting and growing small businesses, while also providing services such as insurance, scholarships, and health benefits to help families build resilience and improve their quality of life.
About Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF):
Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 that provides microfinance and capacity-building services to low-income women across underserved communities in the Philippines, with the goal of improving livelihoods and promoting long-term economic empowerment.
Through a microfinance approach inspired by the Grameen model, NWTF offers group-based and individual loans to support women entrepreneurs in starting and growing small businesses, while also providing services such as insurance, scholarships, and health benefits to help families build resilience and improve their quality of life.
More information about Kiva.org and the Philippines –
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A Wonderful Rotary Project
A wonderful Rotary Project – submitted by Rotarian Neil
I have attended the Yarmouth Rotary clubs “whiskey for water” fund raiser on 3 occasions to raise money to buy Water Hippos. This is what we called them.
Wonderful Rotary project. Have a look –
From their club website -
Our local Rotary Club is quite a busy one - their tireless work in helping to improve our community is something to be proud of. So, when they asked me to be part of one very special fundraising event, I was flattered and very eager to help!
As we know, not everyone has access to clean potable water. The Rotary is part of an international program that helps less-fortunate communities across the world get that much-needed resource. Using the Water-of-Life to supply life-saving water had a nice ring to it!
The evening started with a delicious Whisky Royale cocktail.
• Six pours were served for our guests which were paired with hand-made chocolates, cookies and nuts.
• The 12yo Old Pulteney was well received
• The Macallan 12yo Triple Cask had a wait line!
• Guests were intrigued by the 12yo Post Dhubh (Gaelic whisky you say?)
• The 14yo Bourbonwood Springbank challenged even the most experienced palate.
• And of course the Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban and Glengoyne 15 are always crowd favourites!
• Well we had a heck of a fun evening for sure! All the whiskies were a hit, some great stories told, and good funds raised for clean water projects worldwide.
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A group of big-hearted guys banded together to get the winning bid on this amazing bottle, plus some glassware and a few hours with the Whisky Doc. I’d say that’s a win-win for everyone.
A big thanks to the Rotary for hosting such a worthwhile event!
Read all about the Whisky Doc here - https://thewhiskydoc.com/about
Dr. Paul McLaughlin is a dentist, a shade-tree mechanic, an amateur barbecue cook and whisky expert; a combination with perhaps more similarities than differences.
Paul attended Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. After earning his degree in Chemistry, he entered Dalhousie University for dental school. He graduated with his dental degree in 1997 and set up a dental practice in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
This afforded him connections with people who like to cook and eat and chat…and enjoy a social glass of whisky (usually Canadian “rye” in the late 90s).
Eventually he acquired a hand-made smoker which expanded his culinary options and opened the possibilities to the vast world of barbecue; as his cooking became more complex and nuanced so too did his nose for whisky.
A chemistry background coupled with medical experience helped explain the 'how' and 'why' we enjoy food and drink.
About 20 years ago the interest in whisky shifted from a casual appreciation to a proper connoisseur. Paul toured Scottish and Canadian distilleries with a curiosity for flavour and process and enjoyed a considerable stay at the Springbank Distillery where he graduated their whisky school.
His nose for whisky also earned him a position on the tasting panel for the Isle of Arran Distillery and The Canadian Artisan Spirits Competition. He holds a position at the Highland Whisky Academy where he teaches the Art And Science of Tasting.
Doc is an internationally-accredited Whisky and Gin Ambassador. For more information click here.
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A Musical Interlude
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ROTARIAN CODE OF CONDUCT
As a Rotarian, I will:
***1. Act with integrity and high ethical standards in my personal and professional life
2. Deal fairly with others and treat them and their occupations with respect
3. Use my professional skills through Rotary to mentor young people, help those with special needs, and improve people’s quality of life in my community and in the world
4. Avoid behaviour that reflects adversely on Rotary or other Rotarians
5. Help maintain a harassment-free environment in Rotary meetings, events, and activities; report any suspected harassment; and help ensure non-retaliation to those individuals that report harassment
Rotary’s Code of Conduct provides a simple but powerful guide for ethical behaviour, emphasizing honesty, accountability, and respect for others. Along with the Four-Way Test, it encourages thoughtful reflection on how we live and interact, helping us become better citizens and better human beings.
Material Suggestions and Greeter Messages Always Needed!
Please feel free to forward an approx. 150 - 200 word message or any material suggestions in an e-mail, or in a Word document, along with a JPeg picture or two, to E-Club Administration Chair, Kitty Bucsko.
We'd love to hear from you!
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Just so you're aware -
Our Club's Ongoing Projects -
We provide ongoing support for the following projects:
Click the links below to find out more about each project!
And we're doing great!
Ask for more information if you'd like to be involved!
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Real-time meetings
Once a month - Fellowship Assembly. Each 3rd Thursday of the month is our Fellowship Assembly, and we often invite interesting speakers or Rotary Leaders for this entertaining, educational fun event. Plan to join us.
The time is 9:00 a.m. (Mountain Time) in lieu of the weekly Coffee Chat except for July and August when there are no FA’s. Here is the zoom link:
Everyone is welcome to attend and we encourage your participation.
Please click our Event Calendar for details and access Link.
For further inquiries or suggestions please contact: info@rotaryeclubcanada.ca
All our videos can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
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How do you support our club?
- The Paypal button on our ClubRunner Home Page
- The donation button on the attendance form, or
- Make an Interac transfer to rotaryeclubcanada1@gmail.com
- Send a cheque to:
The Rotary E-Club of Canada One
14008 101 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB
Canada T5N 0K3
(780) 267 4547
Environment
We’ve lived in a synthetic world for more than 70 years. How much longer can it last?
by Susan Freinkel
In 1950, a Philadelphia toy company came out with a new accessory for electric-train enthusiasts: snap-together kits of plastic buildings for a place it called Plasticville U.S.A. Sets of plastic people to populate the town were optional.
Today we all live in Plasticville. But when, exactly, did we take our first steps into this synthetic world? Some say it was in 1870, when the inventor John Wesley Hyatt patented a malleable compound that was originally conceived as a substitute for an increasingly scarce commodity: ivory. It was created from a natural polymer — the cellulose in cotton — combined with other ingredients; Hyatt’s brother Isaiah dubbed the new material celluloid, meaning “like cellulose.”
Others fix the date to 1907, when a Belgian émigré named Leo Baekeland cooked up Bakelite; the first fully synthetic polymer, it was made entirely of molecules that couldn’t be found in nature. With the product’s invention, the Bakelite Corporation boasted, humans had transcended the classic taxonomies of the natural world: the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms. Now we had “a fourth kingdom, whose boundaries are unlimited.”
Bakelite was invented to replace another scarce natural substance: shellac, a product of the sticky excretions of the female lac beetle. Demand for shellac began shooting up in the early 20th century because it was an excellent electrical insulator. Yet it took 15,000 beetles six months to make enough of the amber-colored resin needed to produce a pound of shellac. To keep up with the rapid expansion of the electrical industry, something new was needed.
As it turned out, the plastic Leo Baekeland invented by combining formaldehyde with phenol (a waste product of coal) and subjecting the mixture to heat and pressure was infinitely more versatile than shellac. A dark-colored, rugged material with a sleek, machinelike beauty, it could be precisely molded and machined into nearly anything. Contemporaries hailed its “protean adaptability” and marveled at how Baekeland had transformed something as foul-smelling and nasty as coal tar — long a discard in the coking process — into this wondrous new substance.
The 1920s and ’30s saw an outpouring of new materials from labs around the world. One was cellulose acetate, a semisynthetic product (plant cellulose was one of its base ingredients) that had the easy adaptability of celluloid but wasn’t flammable. Another was polystyrene, a hard, shiny plastic that could take on bright colors, remain crystalline clear, or be puffed up with air to become the foamy polymer DuPont later trademarked as Styrofoam.
DuPont also introduced nylon, its answer to the centuries-long search for an artificial silk. When the first nylon stockings were introduced, after a campaign that promoted the material as being as “lustrous as silk” and as “strong as steel,” women went wild. Stores sold out of their stock in hours, and in some cities, the scarce supplies led to nylon riots. Across the ocean, British chemists discovered polyethylene, the strong, moisture- proof polymer that would become the sine qua non of packaging. Eventually, we’d get plastics with features nature had never dreamed of: surfaces to which nothing would stick (Teflon), fabrics that could stop a bullet (Kevlar).
Much of the plastic we’ve produced is with us still. Humans could disappear from the earth tomorrow, but many of the plastics we’ve made will last for centuries.
Though fully synthetic like Bakelite, many of these new materials differed in one significant way. Bakelite is a thermoset plastic, meaning that its polymer chains are hooked together through the heat and pressure applied when it is molded. The molecules set the way batter sets in a waffle iron. And once those molecules are linked into a daisy chain, they can’t be unlinked. You can break a piece of Bakelite, but you can’t melt it down to make it into something else.
Polymers such as polystyrene and nylon and polyethylene are thermoplastics; their polymer chains are formed in chemical reactions that take place before the plastic ever gets near a mold. The bonds holding these daisy chains together are looser than those in Bakelite, and as a result these plastics readily respond to heat and cold. Unlike Bakelite, they can be molded and melted and remolded over and over again. Their shape-shifting versatility is one reason thermoplastics quickly eclipsed the thermosets.
Humour
A woman was getting her hair done at the salon for a trip to Rome with her husband.
She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded: "Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It's crowded and dirty. You're crazy to go to Rome. So how are you getting there?"
"We're taking Continental," was the reply. "We got a great rate!"
She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded: "Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It's crowded and dirty. You're crazy to go to Rome. So how are you getting there?"
"We're taking Continental," was the reply. "We got a great rate!"
"Continental?" exclaimed the hairdresser. "That's a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly and they're always late. So where are you staying in Rome?"
"We'll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome's Tiber River called Teste."
"Don't go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks it's gonna be something special and exclusive, but it's really a dump."
"We're going to go to see the Vatican and maybe get to see the Pope."
"That's rich," laughed the hairdresser. "You and a million other people trying to see him. He'll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You're going to need it."
A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.
"It was wonderful," explained the woman, "not only were we on time in one of Continental's brand new planes, but it was overbooked and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot.
And the Teste hotel was great! They'd just finished a $5 million remodeling and now it's a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner's suite at no extra charge!"
"Well," muttered the hairdresser, "that's all well and good, but I know you didn't get to see the Pope."
"Actually, we were quite lucky because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors and if I'd be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me."
"Oh, really!" exclaimed the hairdresser. "What'd he say?"
"He said: ‘Who screwed up your hair?’"
"We'll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome's Tiber River called Teste."
"Don't go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks it's gonna be something special and exclusive, but it's really a dump."
"We're going to go to see the Vatican and maybe get to see the Pope."
"That's rich," laughed the hairdresser. "You and a million other people trying to see him. He'll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You're going to need it."
A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.
"It was wonderful," explained the woman, "not only were we on time in one of Continental's brand new planes, but it was overbooked and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot.
And the Teste hotel was great! They'd just finished a $5 million remodeling and now it's a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner's suite at no extra charge!"
"Well," muttered the hairdresser, "that's all well and good, but I know you didn't get to see the Pope."
"Actually, we were quite lucky because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors and if I'd be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me."
"Oh, really!" exclaimed the hairdresser. "What'd he say?"
"He said: ‘Who screwed up your hair?’"
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Rotary minute
Did you know that there is a Rotary Action Group for Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health?
RMCH Youth Programs through Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Global Dialogues
The Rotary Action Group for Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health (RMCH) is driving youth-led change through two complementary strategies: comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and intergenerational youth dialogues. Together, these approaches aim to expand knowledge, break silence, and challenge the stigma that limits young people’s autonomy and well-being.
In India, RMCH partnered with the Capitol Hill Rotary and local Rotary clubs to implement school-based CSE in urban and rural areas of Kolkata and Asansol, West Bengal, reaching 829 adolescents. In the South East District of Delhi, Rotary clubs in Washington, D.C., and local Rotary club in Delhi supported a community-based CSE program implemented by the NGO Agragami, which engaged over 1,200 adolescent girls, including school dropouts.
These programs addressed menstruation, sexual rights, STI prevention, contraception, mental health, and reproductive autonomy, targeting both in-school and out-of-school youth. In Guatemala, RMCH funded a culturally adapted adolescent health curriculum led by traditional midwives and Indigenous educators, aligned with UNESCO’s international technical guidance on sexuality education.
In India, RMCH partnered with the Capitol Hill Rotary and local Rotary clubs to implement school-based CSE in urban and rural areas of Kolkata and Asansol, West Bengal, reaching 829 adolescents. In the South East District of Delhi, Rotary clubs in Washington, D.C., and local Rotary club in Delhi supported a community-based CSE program implemented by the NGO Agragami, which engaged over 1,200 adolescent girls, including school dropouts.
These programs addressed menstruation, sexual rights, STI prevention, contraception, mental health, and reproductive autonomy, targeting both in-school and out-of-school youth. In Guatemala, RMCH funded a culturally adapted adolescent health curriculum led by traditional midwives and Indigenous educators, aligned with UNESCO’s international technical guidance on sexuality education.
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Rotary Members
The Circle of Care
One act of care often creates a circle that continues long after we are gone.
A healthy mother raises a healthy child. That child grows into an adult who may care for a family, serve a community, teach a classroom, heal patients, or inspire others.
We may never know all the lives touched by the projects Rotary supports, but every child given a healthier start in life becomes part of a story much larger than our own.
We may never know all the lives touched by the projects Rotary supports, but every child given a healthier start in life becomes part of a story much larger than our own.
A Universal Language
Around the world, cultures may differ, languages may differ, and circumstances may differ.
But there is one thing that is universal: every parent hopes for a healthy future for their child.
Rotary's commitment to maternal and child health reminds us that some of our deepest human hopes are shared by people everywhere.
By supporting mothers and children, we help turn those hopes into reality.
Rotary Jukebox
For a small donation, your favorite musician will be featured on one of our next e-meetings for everyone to enjoy.
Click Here to send your request.
THIS WEEK - George Michael, Elton John duet
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The Four-way Test
To close the meeting, Rotarian Gillian recites the Four-Way Test of the things that Rotarians think, say, or do.
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Program Donations
Our E-Club is a dynamic club comprised of ordinary working and retired people who acknowledge that Rotarians are people who are generous with their time and their resources.
Our club and the program you have just enjoyed, either as a member or a visitor, is funded only by donations.
We are developing ideas for fundraising with our members who are scattered across Canada, USA, Central America, and Europe, but we do need your help.
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