Bulletin - July 7, 2011

Chairperson Robin     brought the meeting to order at 7:15 am.

Today's meeting had only Rotarians (except for the speaker).  It felt strange as we had no guests to line up behind for breakfast.  The birthday front was equally challanging as only a  RYE student had a birthday.  We couldn't  give Katrina the hat as she is somewhere in the country enjoying the Cross Canada Tour.  Continuing the trend, there were no anniversaries or pin pal stories.

Darren was tapped to draw the 50/50 draw ticket - and he drew his own.  Obviously he was happy.  Pam H. was happy that Frank's brother-in-law, Tom Stanfield was recently inducted into the Order of Canada.....Dianne was happy the Cloe MacIsaac sent her a thank you card for being chosen as an outbound RYE student......Charlie has a PSA for a three-week series at the Campbell Carriage factory, featuring a play and select readings......Pam B. was happy to be going to PEI for sailing  and the play "the Full Monte"......Ove was happy that daughter Anna and her husband will be coming home for a visit soon.....Andy was a "hole-bunch" happy as he just celebrated his 24th wedding anniversary, his father Albert received a good report from his doctor, his son has just left on a trip and his daughter and husband will be coming home shortly from Cold Lake Alberta......Sue was happy that she went to a birthday party that turned into a full fledged wedding.

Next Week is a Club Assembly with President Ken in the Chair.   The greeter is Peter and the Laing patrol will be Charlie.

Even with the summer firmly entrenched, the work of the committees continue.  Trish reported that Salem School was very, very, very happy with the new Smart Board supplied by our Club.  Ove reminded all that he has the grocery cards.  Dianne updated the Club on RYE matters.  Pauliina has returned to Finland and Katrina is on the Cross Canada Tour.  Shironi is now back from France (George we need her as a speaker), and Adelia will be returning from Switzerland at the end of July.  Our two new inbound students Pernell from Denmark will arrive on August 20th and Felix from Germany will be here two days later.  The committee advises that host families are still needed.

The Club Admin Committee will meet next Monday, July 11th at Wayne's house at 7:15 pm.  The Project committee will meet on July 28th at Trishes house.

President Ken advised the members that with the relocation of Bruno to Sherbrook, the VP/President Elect position for 2012-2013 opened up.  Trish, who was to hold those offices for 2013-2014 has agreed to move up a year.  This will leave the Sectretary and a Direcror's position open in the current Board.  Ken asked for volunteers

At last weeks servce awards meeting, a number of members were absent.  This week, Charlie was present and accepted a Presidential Certificate.

Also accepting a Presidential Certificate was Trish.

On the Service Awards front, Leslie accepted her 10 year Service Certificate from President Ken.                                                                  

Gayle had the pleasure of introducing our guest speaker, Dr. Andrew Grant.  A product of Queens and UNB, Andrew is currently a faculty member at MTA, teaching Organic Chemistry.  The subject of Andrew's talk was Clean Energy.  In the next twenty years, the world will need to double supplies from all sources just to keep up with the demand.  In other words, a new nuclear plant will need to become operational each week for the next 35 years just to keep up.  With 85% of the world CO2 coming from oil and gas, the next few years will cause the world to begin thinking differently as far as fossil fuel production is concerned.  Andrew believes that clean energy could come from water.  Water is currently made up of hydrogen and oxygen, producing stable energy.  Reversing the process to extract hydrogen from water will produce incalcuable amounts of energy.  The process requires the energy from the  sun to achieve this.  Unfortunately, hydrogen is a very dangerious gas and the infastructure for transporting it has not been developed.

Another thought is that combining  hydrogen and carbon dioxide together will produce methanol, a cleaner and more stable form of energy.  The current infastructure can handle methanol.  Again using the CO2 from the air is a clean way of producing energy.  Current hybrid technology is not actually clean because of the power requirements and their sources.  Andrew concluded his remarks by answering questions from the group.  Louise thanked Andrew for his talk by donating a book in his name to a local school library.