Rotary in Sherbrooke -- 90 years of history

 

 

The Rev. George Elery Read was the first president of the Rotary Club of Sherbrooke. Rotary Images

The year 2009 marks the 90th anniversary of Rotary in Quebec. Following in the footsteps of Montréal and Quebec City, the Rotary Club of Sherbrooke was the third club of La Belle Province.

Chartered on 17 June 1919, all its members were English-speakers. Rotarians Haight, McKinnon, Farwell, Blue, Sangster, Barrett, Skinner, Rosenbloom, Page, Dakin, Palmer, Lunderville, Morrill, Patterson, and Rugg were businessmen and prominent figures in the community. At this time, ethical values were already the cornerstone of Rotary and the first President of the Rotary Club of Sherbrooke was George Elery Read, a 54-year-old reverend who was renowned for his patriotic engagement during World War I. The club meetings were held in Magog House.

The Sherbrooke Club’s first service project was to create public hygiene administration services in the city.

Rotary in Sherbrooke was well established in the community and during his first twenty years its main area of focus was underprivileged children. Many projects were carried out such as  a lavish picnic for 300 young boys in the North Hatley countryside in the summer of 1922. Childhood protection, public swimming pool, clothing distributions (socks, shoes, and winters boots), summer camps, and concerts were the type of projects carried out by Rotary in Sherbrooke during the club’s first years of existence.

A quick calculation shows that funds used by Rotarians in the Sherbrooke area are close to one million dollars. But World Community Service is far from being neglected. Sherbrooke Rotarians participated in a 3-H grant project developed by D-7850 in which $356,000 were used to provide clean water to the region of Tamale, Ghana and to eradicate Guinean Warm in this area. A second Rotary club, Sherbrooke Métropolitain has now been created in this community of 147,000 inhabitants. On 3 October, the 90th anniversary of Rotary was celebrated in the city with a human chain, the “Rotary Peace Chain,” which connected the West and East sides of Sherbrooke

Claude LaLiberté is a member of the Rotary Club of Sherbrooke Métropolitain