May 2004

Dear Brother Knights,

It’s the twilight of my term as your Grand Knight. There is only two more active months left in the Columbian year, which ends on June 30. At this time of year we are witnessing the birth of a new Spring and season of growth in nature. Also there is the impending end of the school year, which is getting mixed up with the opening of summer sport seasons. The Hockey School is drawing near, and I expect that most people will be exploring various stages of their holidays starting as soon as now, and stretching until the new Fall season arrives.

And mixed in to all of this are so many little things that need to be dealt with or tied up for another year. Darren and I just attended the State convention in Edmonton on April 23-25. We also had our District Deputy Bro Andy Hawboldt in attendance as well as Bro Dan Denman who is our State PR Director. Not to forget our Past State Deputy and transferred member of our council Bro Lito Reyes. So as usual there was a healthy contingent from the Fr. Leduc Council.

I am not sure how many of you know what the purpose of the convention is, but it is essentially the annual general meeting of the State board and all of the representatives from across our State territory. During the year we as a council have the opportunity to write up resolutions that we hope to see carried on a State level and send them in to the main office in preparation for the convention and it’s business meetings. During those meetings we hear the reports from all the various state reps and program directors, we hold the State elections, and we read, discuss and vote on the many resolutions that have been presented.

So that means that I should give you a rundown of what happened so that you can all be kept up to date on the current State activities. What I am going to do is make a copy of the resolutions that were read and voted upon (we have to go through them all at the convention) and keep it in the chambers for anyone that wants to see them. I have yet to explore this, but I suspect that being a business report, it may be restricted to the members of the order, so as much as I would like to, I won’t be posting it on the bulletin board outside the chambers.

I will speak here about a couple particularly important ones however. The first of which I have submitted to be added to the newsletter. It deals with the Knights of Columbus and their progression out of casino fundraising. Now this issue was printed prior to the meeting, when our current State Deputy Mickey Cassavant was quoted as saying that in following our Bishops lead and request, the Alberta K of C would be working to get away from this method of fundraising.

The resolution that was originally submitted suggested that we would quit cold turkey. This doesn’t affect us in Leduc as we predominantly rely on Bingo’s for our fundraising, however there are a great many other councils who only use casino fundraising, and this resolution impacts them immensely.

The issue was two sided. First and foremost was the fast that we need to be in solidarity with our Priests and Bishops. When we are asked to follow their lead in a matter, this not withstanding, it is of utmost importance that we do just that. It may not be a popular or easy decision to make, but it never is easy to stand behind a difficult yet right position.

The second side was that there are councils out there that actually own property or are somehow contractually obligated to some financial burden. It is for this reason that the original motion was not accepted and that a new amended version was passed. It basically leaves an open-ended time frame for those councils to work on getting out of their dependence on casinos.

Now why am I wasting your time and council paper on this? While the issue is exclusive to casinos, the spirit is aimed at fundraising through gaming events. I don’t seem to have been able to nail this down with anyone I spoke with, because I think that no one wanted to deal with casinos, and then open up the bingo grenade. However in all practicality, bingos are progressing in that direction on their own. There is a good chance that someone will bring it up at the next convention to deal with, but I suspect that there is an equal chance that we will decide to do something in the meantime anyway.

The reason that I say this is due to the facts that 1) workers are hard to come by now. Out of our 140 members, we have broken up them all into 2 bingo teams. Of those two teams, both captains need to put calls in to both sets of team members in order to fill out the line up for any given bingo. It seems that there are approximately 20- 25 members who work all the bingos between them with the odd straggler in there somewhere. You might ask why we don’t just assign certain people to certain bingos and make it a requirement to work a bingo or two a year for every member? The answer to that is this. As a volunteer organization, we have no right to demand anything not in the rules and bylaws of the order. I know that if I wanted my kids to play in a club sport or something that required me to work a bingo for fundraising, I would consider that a ‘must do’. In return I get a break in the cost or the kids get some new uniforms or something. There is a return to me in there. With the Knights bingos, we don’t see a return to each member and it has been said that no one can associate working a bingo with the community involvement and activity it funds any more. It is the equivalent of driving to the city once or twice a month because the road is there to do it with. I understand this thinking and I can respect anyone who has a health or moral issue with working a bingo. However, we are facing a problem in this circumstance. If the majority of the council seems to have a problem with working the bingos, then what the heck are we doing? Why are we letting the same 15 old guys carry the bingo workload? Why do I want to hear about how close we are to getting fined and losing a bingo because we couldn’t find enough guys to staff one?

All of this bundled up with the fact that it isn’t even providing the return that it once did for us and it looks like it is only going to get slimmer as time goes on. When we sat down to put together this year’s budget we basically estimated a 25% drop in bingo income, so we then used that as a number for each budgeted item to be dropped 25% from last year to this year. Some things didn’t work out that well, but mostly it was either that or get dropped from the budget altogether.

There is still a lot of value and merit to bingos in Leduc, and I do not personally hold some kind of discrimination towards them for any reason. What I do oppose is doing something that is causing more problems than it solves, and in my eyes that is the direction that they have been heading in a hurry this past few years.

Having said this, it is high time to be proactive and really start to put together a plan regarding fundraising. The question is not how to we replace bingo and that amount of income annually. The question is what is our annual financial need, based on things that absolutely need to be taken care of by this council, and how can we get to that amount without bingo in the future.
We have several ideas on the table, and some already in the works. One of course is to work the Big Valley Jamboree and Stage 13, which in turn should generate about $10-12 thousand for the council. This could work out well for us, or maybe it will be a one time deal based on this years experience. We will be selling drink tokens for the bars and beer gardens. Now the first thing that comes to mind is “Are we getting out of gaming and into drinking”. My immediate responses is obviously that if this is also a moral issue for you, then come to the meetings, stand up and make your democratic voice heard on this issue. But then the next step is to ask what is morally acceptable to you for fundraising? We have a democratic order and that is forum for discussion to make things better, but unfortunately it is also forum to just oppose everything with no constructive plans. Please give it some thought.

Another plan is the dinner theatre that we ran last year. It is our great hope that this could become fruitful for us if we work it right. Nothing will be easy and all the new ideas will be more work in their first years that they will in the years following. The hockey camp is on and off the table in these discussions too. There are plans for a few sport tournaments with unique flavors to them. Also there is our pro life/ hearing aid raffle fundraiser. Gaming again? This is a raffle and not gaming events per say. Maybe that is a fine line, but hey, I still watch the Simpson’s and pro sports on TV. We won’t be able to solve everything, and instead of just holding back on everything just in case, I hope to use my time here on Earth doing as much and learning as much for God as possible. If we hesitate all the time in fear of making mistakes, then we will never make the mistakes that move us on to better understanding.

We need to have a committee set up to look these issues over and report back to the council. This is a must do if for no other reason than to seriously take a look at what our actual financial need is and what it is not. Something that rings true in my mind over and over again is what Denman says about new councils forming and having no established means of fundraising. No casino. No bingo. No breakfasts. Nothing. And yet these are the guys who will get up and help build the fence instead of just paying for someone else to do it for them and taking some measure of credit for it. These are the guys who sit down and get creative with their problem solving and come up with solutions that not only suite them, but strangely could apply to many others as well. I know that we have those kinds of guys here. Don’t let yourself be stuck in a pattern and not praying for a big picture alternative.

There were several pro-life resolutions on the table for the convention, and this is becoming an issue that gets closer to my heart all the time. I keep my distance because it gets me so mad that I won’t think rationally about things and then I want to get into a fight with anyone who insists on the selfish alternative of abortion or euthanasia. But thanks to God, there are very capable and rational folks who work on the issues facing us on the culture of death front.

One resolution was to have every council adopt the tiny feet pin that represents the actual size of feet of a child at 10 weeks into the pregnancy. They also want us to adopt a second pro-life pin that is of a gold cross with a rose for life on it. I got one of each at the convention, but I will have that resolution printed in a future newsletter. I have websites and pamphlets to read over and check out if you are interested.

I have to share this with you as well. Every year we elect three people to attend the Supreme convention as Insurance delegates, meaning that they hold insurance with the Knights and that they each can cast a vote at the meetings as an Alberta/NWT State representative. Then there are also four Associate Delegates who only have to be members of the Knights, but I do not believe that they have a vote. I have been slowly making friends with a new Grand Knight in Edmonton who is 30 and went from Inside Guard to Grand Knight in his council in one election. They simply didn’t have anyone that would agree to stand in, so he said yes. His name is Francis Lejeunesse and he asked me to nominate him for the insurance delegation. So I did, and I got up and gave a short little speech on his behalf like most of the other nominators did. He didn’t get elected for this position and then asked me to nominate him for associate delegate. His young wife is currently about 5 or 6 months pregnant with their 3rd child, so I suggested that this might not be such a good time to travel. The Supreme convention is in Texas this year. But he was sure that they would be all okay to go and so I told him (and myself) that if God wanted him to go, then he would be going whether I thought it was a good idea or not, and then I nominated him for the associate delegate. He got up to make a small little speech on his own behalf this time. I guess God has a sense of humor because he won, and is now making plans to attend the next Supreme convention. Go figure.

And while there is so much more to say about the convention and what the end of the year brings to us, I will close with some congratulations to the Our Lady of the Hill council in Beaumont for receiving several program awards this year under the leadership of Paul Weisenberger and Dennis Madu. And also in case you were wondering, the elected positions of the State board have not changed. This is an incumbent second term for all of them. Congratulations to them all and good luck when I send them my next nasty letter eh.

State Deputy Mickey Cassavant (St. Albert)
State Secretary Peter Wong (Calgary)
State Warden Wally Streit (Edmonton)
State Treasurer Bill Smith (Calgary)
State Advocate Neil Gannon (Edmonton)

Vivat Jesus
Chris

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