Today we welcome our current Club President, Paul Finnerty, as the star of “Tonic Tuesday!” Paul was kind enough to take the time to participate in our club’s Tuesday ‘special’ wherein we highlight the personal, Rotarian journey of one of our club members.  Here is Paul’s journey in his own words:

“Prior to 2016 my only knowledge of Rotary was seeing the occasional Rotary logo on town notice boards, or perhaps on a community park. During the summer of 2016 I was approached by Matteo Patricelli who invited me to attend a meeting of a newly formed Rotary Club called ‘Tonic.’ I liked what I heard about the work of Rotary, and how it could provide opportunities to help others in our community to help themselves. So, in November of 2016, I became a Charter member, with Cynthia Janzen doing an amazing job as President at that time.

In my first year, I chaired the Project Committee and we set to work on developing two streams of project work. The first was our ‘quick win’ projects. An example of this type of work was our ‘hygiene kits’. The team identified a strong need in the community to supply certain daily essentials (i.e. toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorants, hair products, sanitary products, et al). Our club members came together and packaged all these products into kits which we then supplied to agencies in the city for distribution. We repeated the project several times. The second stream was developing a project that would be ongoing and would assist in providing an opportunity for those it helped to become self-sustaining. This led to the formation of ‘Rotary Advisors’. Under the leadership of Marcel Mongeon, this team offers advice to not-for-profit organizations in many aspects of formation, governance, and sustainability.

Following my time with the Project Committee I spent two years as the Club Treasurer, and in 2021 assumed the role of Club President. It has been a great experience working with a team of volunteers who readily give up their personal time to assist with projects such as food preparation, working on a farm, stocking community fridges, taking part in bike rides, and lake clean-ups. Rotary is a fascinating organization as its scope covers large worldwide projects, such eliminating polio, right down to providing support to our immediate community.”

Like other Club Presidents before him, Paul has, and continues, to exude strong leadership skills in his role. He is diligently guiding our club through this “Covid” era with an inner calmness and dignity that encourages our members to keep the Rotarian faith and move forward in executing “service above self.”