Vernon Branch

 

 

Vernon Branch Executive

 

 

Branch Fee

$5.00

Branch Photographs

no photographs

 

 

Branch News and Events

 

Link to Vernon Retired Teachers Association Website

 Link to Vernon Branch website

 

Vernon Branch Report 2011

The Vernon Branch of the BCRTA had another very successful year. Our meetings are short and fast-paced, complemented with good food, good company, interesting speakers and/or entertainment. This plan has evolved over the years and our members are happy with it. Members are informed of our gatherings by a hard-working telephone committee of sixteen members. Our current schedule is five lunch gatherings a year for the general membership. These are held every other month from September to May. This year’s format consisted of arriving around 10:30 for socializing before a half hour meeting, followed by a guest presentation, then lunch.

Again this year we varied the locations of our gatherings. Our September meeting was held at the lovely Vernon Golf and Country Club and was well attended. Other gatherings were held at a church hall and a seniors centre. Our Christmas gathering, a buffet of turkey and all the trimmings, was held in a ballroom at the Village Green Hotel. The drawing card was Ken Mather from the O’Keefe Ranch sharing cowboy stories and poetry, and a terrific belly dancer who is an ex-student of one of our executive members. We had a record turnout of 99 people! We regularly have anywhere from 55 to 75 members who attend our bi-monthly meetings, which we think is admirable for a medium to small district. Other presentation topics this year were: The Therapy Dogs Program, including a visit from one of the dogs; The Vernon Food Bank; Basics of Feng Shui; and Wildlife Photography. We ended our year with the AGM at a hall on a beautiful park where we were entertained by the Coldstream Elementary School choir. This was followed by a picnic outdoors and a self-guided tour of the newly–opened Coldstream Elementary School.

In addition to our general meetings, we have a first day of school breakfast to which all the new retirees are invited. We cover the cost of their breakfast. We also hosted the Thompson-Okanagan Zone Inter-Branch Social which saw about ten members from the zone join about twenty of our members for a tour of the Historic Murals of downtown Vernon. This was followed by a lovely buffet lunch in the atrium at the Vernon Lodge Hotel. It was the last Inter-Branch Social of our zone since at the zone meeting in the spring it was decided that there was no longer the need or interest in a zone-wide social.

Giving back to our community is a priority for this branch. We accomplish this mainly through our support to the food bank and through our scholarship program. Two food drives are held each year, one in January and the other in June, times when our food bank is low. Our scholarship program annually presents five scholarships of $750 each (total of $3750) to local graduates. Our members are very generous in their support of both campaigns! We also partner with the VTA to provide support for the “Books for Pre-schoolers” Program.

In the coming year we hope to continue to grow our membership, especially by appealing to the more recent retirees. We plan to do this by offering a strong social component and by choosing an appealing variety of venues. We have our display board at the SD 22 Pro D days and two of our Executive offer the BCRTA workshop on retirement there. We are also hoping to embark upon a Heritage Project, with assisting our School Board in establishing a policy related to preserving SD22 heritage as our first goal. One of our past executive members will coordinate this initiative.

We try to ensure the health of our association by encouraging new members to join the executive every two years. That way we have an injection of new ideas and gradual change. Many thanks to Doug Edgar, who tries to attend as many of our executive meetings as his busy schedule allows, and to our hard-working group of five other executive members who were so supportive and were responsible for a very successful year!

Respectfully submitted,
Jan Pronovost, President

 

 

Vernon Branch Archives