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The Blind River Rotary Club has been active and supporting the community since 1988, but with a dwindling membership, President Bob McAllister says they need new members to keep it going.
McAllister has been a Rotarian for 20 years and would love to see some younger people join and notes that even four or five new members would give the club “a new life.”
“The club is a lot of fun,” he says. “It’s nice if you move to a community to walk into a grocery store and know a lot of people.”
The club supports the Santa Claus parade, the Blind River Beavers, and the women’s shelter. It also provides bursaries to high school students at both the English and French schools and sends students to the Rotary Young Leadership training. The club also provides Christmas gift baskets for isolated seniors. McAllister adds that a few years ago when the cross-country club was burglarized, the club supported them by acting as a conduit for donations.
Among many other charitable efforts, the Rotary Club also built the Pavilion at Sellers Park, now used for summer concerts by the water.
“It’s a good opportunity for local talent, both from Blind River and Elliott Lake, to get an audience,” he says. “It’s a great opportunity for cottagers, tourists or locals, to have a place to go on a Thursday night, sit in the lawn chairs and listen to some really good music.”
The club’s biggest fundraiser is its annual golf tournament, which McAllister says garners “wonderful community support.”
The non-profit also has an international arm, which, among other global causes, runs an Adopt-A-Senior program out of the Dominican Republic, guaranteeing that the seniors supported will receive one hot meal a day for the year.
As a completely volunteer-run organization, all donations the community gives to the Rotary Club go directly back to the community.
“At the end of the day, rotaries a lot of fun, and incidentally, we do a lot of good,” he says.
Interested volunteers can call McAllister at 705-356-7777 or email [email protected].
