It is with a heavy heart that I must announce we have decided to cancel your May 15 and 16th District 5020 Training And Conference.  The Government of BC has banned all events of more than 50 people until the 30th of May.  Like us, they want you to be safe.

For those of you who have registered for DTAC, your registration fees will be refunded on the credit card you used.  You will receive a confirming email via ClubRunner.

If you booked a hotel room at the Fairmont Empress using the DTAC Rotary code your room has been automatically cancelled.

If you booked a hotel room at the Hotel Grand Pacific please contact them now to cancel this reservation.

Despite this cancellation, the training sessions will still take place.  You will be receiving information in the next while about how that is going to be accomplished.  We are all going to help District Trainer Marnee Obendorf come up with creative ways to ensure the training goes forward.

I hope you all will utilize some electronic method of staying in touch, perhaps even meeting, while this medical situation proceeds. One of the joys of Rotary is the fellowship and friendships that come from meeting together.  While we may not meet face to face, we should still stay in touch with our Club members.

We have a Club in the District that has not met face to face since its inception – The E-Club of District 5020. Feel free to reach out to our E-Club for ideas, input and suggestions.

We Rotarians are people of action.  We are the ones who see a challenge and make it an opportunity.  We will always rise to serve our communities.  We should ask ourselves what we can do for our communities right now.  I know there are a couple of urgent needs:

• Food banks are short volunteers.
• Blood banks are being depleted.

Look at your community and see how we can help.  Just because we are not meeting doesn’t mean that we quit believing in Service Above Self.

I am so sad that we will not celebrate together in Victoria, but at the same time I am incredibly proud of the Training & Conference team.  Do you know we had 280 people register in just three short weeks.  That’s a record!  We didn’t get to see the finished product but the work put into creating it has been exceptional.

Thank you to Joan Peggs and her incredible team.  From everyone in District 5020, thank you for caring and taking the time to try to throw this party.  It would have been awesome.

In the meantime, be safe, wash your hands, take part in the training as it becomes available and look forward to the Rotary Conference to end all conferences in 2021.

I am so proud to be your governor!

Aloha,