The Southwest Assiniboine Chapter of the Retired Teachers' Association of Manitoba had their Spring Luncheon on Tuesday, April 19 in the Club Room of the Royal Canadian Legion in Virden.
There was a good gathering of the retired teachers though more members would have been great. There were members from Reston, Elkhorn, McAuley, and Virden plus places in between.
The luncheon began with "Grace" given by President Kel Smith. The Ukrainian lunch was catered by First Street Foods & Catering - farmer's sausage, perogies, cabbage rolls, and veggies topped off by a moist and tasty chocolate cake. For refreshments the members had coffee, soft drinks, or water.
After lunch, we heard from our very special guest speaker, Doctor Elizabeth Rhynold who spoke on "Preventing Dementia" which proved to be very interesting. Doctor Rhynold gave twelve good suggestions on how dementia could be prevented plus some other ideas that are in the wind from a research prospective.
The doctor said that 40 per cent of dementia could be prevented if you followed the research results. Doctor Rhynold is an Internal Medicine Subspecialist in Geriatric Medicine. The writer took three pages of notes concerning her presentation, that's how interesting it was to learn new factual information on dementia.
The doctor will be receiving a thank-you card and hand-written note from our SWAC Secretary (Kathy Welsh).
The door prize draws were made after the presentation. These prizes were donated by some of the members and one local company. There were about half-a-dozen draws made.
Beth Allison informed us of our "2022 SWAC Day Trip" which will be held on Tuesday, June 28. We are off to Winnipeg to see the new Inuit Art Gallery at the WAG where we will also have lunch at their famous restaurant. Then those who wish to explore the rest of the WAG can stay and those who wish to go to the McPhillips Street Casino can go. Mrs. Allison stated that on the way back we would be having a roast beef supper at the Royal Canadian Legion in Portage La Prairie.
What followed next was the SWAC Business Meeting where a number of decisions were made, new information was given out to the assembly, reports such as Friendship (Pat Wolfe), Travel (Beth Allison), Financial (Jerome Brockman), and Presidential (Kel Smith) were given along with one election for a new SWAC Treasurer: Mr. Jerome Brockman of Reston. We would like to sincerely thank Mr. Glen McKinnon of Virden for the years that he spent as our faithful SWAC Treasurer.
Items of interest:
At the next meeting an Indigenous Blessing will be given by a Red River Metis and an Indigenous Land Acknowledgement will be voiced: "We would like to acknowledge that we are on Treaty One Territory. This land is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the national homeland of the Red River Metis."
A motion was made to pay the bills and make a donation to the Virden Legion.
Old business and new business was discussed.
The next SWAC Meeting is the Fall Luncheon Meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 6, where a new Executive will be voted in to look after the chapter's business.
