North Shore Toastmasters
Club Meeting
February 14th, 2005
For the first time in years we
celebrated Valentine Day in our regular meeting room rather than
in a restaurant, and our Sgt.@ Arms, Neville Cohen made sure the
room was festively decorated, and that the refreshments
reflected this special occasion. It was an interesting meeting,
to say the least, and Jill McCormick, the Chairman, kicked it
off with her thoughts about the evening’s theme of:
“Chivalry”. Jan Khubyar described Jill as composed, cheerful,
calm and confident”.
We were honoured to host, among our guests, our
Area Governor, Jan Furst. Jan, a man with a twinkle in his eye,
belongs to a club on Bowen Island and is always a welcome
participant.
Dave Stewart, always full of surprises, chose
“Cretin” as the special word for the meeting. He admitted
having chosen it because that is what he must be - he had been
so busy he had forgotten that it was Valentine Day! Isn’t it
interesting how sometimes when we come up with a Word
capriciously, it actually catches on? That’s what happened to
Dave … No one was more surprised than he at the number of times
people gleefully (or satisfyingly) made opportunities to use the
word ‘cretin’!
The ever chivalrous Gil Hardman inspired us with
a talk about chivalry, and once again Ruth Sol tickled us with
the twist in her joke (where does she find them???).
“I’d be delighted!” That is Don Ekroth’s
standard answer whenever asked to pitch in at the last minute.
This night our Table Topic Master was not well and Don stepped
in with gusto. He quickly came up with a number of thematic
topics, many of which were aimed at tweaking the Speakers’
imaginations. After hearing a variety of creative
interpretations, the audience voted the award of Best Table
Topic to Dave Stewart
One of our newest members, Omar Hung, introduced
himself to us through his first formal speech. He told a moving
story confidently, and straight from his heart. Very
memorable.
Then Neville Cohen brought history to life as he
recounted a story, a true tale, about a young woman in Africa in
the mid 1700s who thought she had the spiritual power to help
her people. Neville even had that special ‘click’ some of us
have heard before when listening to African names being
pronounced! (His South African accent helped, too!) Using
excellent concrete suggestions, and picking up on the pluses of
his presentation, Li Ying Kao made it obvious that she had
thoroughly enjoyed this story.
Jan Khubyar spent the entire meeting making
copious notes as she evaluated everyone and everything that
wasn’t being evaluated by someone else. This is a teaching
role, generally taken on by the more experienced members. It is
not an easy role, and Jan (a comic at heart!) was not backward
about letting us know this as she delivered her positively
focused remarks on how we did.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank
Jan for taking the time and effort to replace our tattered place
name cards with fresh new ones, and for taking the initiative of
making special ones for our Guests, as well
(And while we are at it…She is the one who brought the Valentine
Day cookies!)
We are
looking forward to having you all join us at our next meeting on
Feb. 21st.
Club 1085
