Welcome

Welcome to the Hanover Area Probus Club!

We invite you to explore our new website!

We are a vibrant community of retired people who come together to enjoy enriching activities, engaging social events, and lifelong learning opportunities. Our club is dedicated to fostering fellowship, fun, and personal growth among our members.

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Are you interested in participating in group activities and events, hearing interesting guest speakers, or simply making new friends? There’s something for everyone at the Hanover Area Probus Club.

We encourage you to consider becoming a member. Click BECOME A MEMBER now to find out how and start enjoying what our club has to offer.

We look forward to welcoming you in person!

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Mark Your Calendar

Our April Speaker is Gem Munro

Gem Munro has spent his life standing up for human rights and human potential.

He's a best-selling author, with books that reflect his background of extreme and varied experiences.

His novels portray the danger and beauty of life in remote Arctic Indigenous communities, the precarious absurdity of life in South Asian mega-slums, and the hidden underbelly of Canada's urban racism.

He and Tanyss have worked as a team throughout her career in education, transforming educational opportunities for Indigenous youth across Canada and overseas.

In recognition of his work, Gem was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Gem's career has exposed him to the extremities of human circumstance, and imbued him with a deep love for humanity and an insight into human nature. These traits are the hallmarks of his writing.

Our March Speaker was Julie Mackenzie, The Bridge Learning Center

Julie Mackenzie is the owner of the Bridge Learning Center. She is a long-time resident of Bruce County, a teacher, a wife, and a mother to 2 teenage boys. Before embarking on this business venture this past summer, she taught in public, separate, and public schools for over 20 years. The Bridge Learning Center offers student specific, 1 on 1 teaching in their office facility in Walkerton. They use their experience, best practices, and scientifically proven research to close student learning gaps in reading and mathematics.

Their program is designed to take students on an incredible journey to better learning and enhanced confidence. They are currently operating at capacity, serving 34 students from K to grade 7.

Staff of 5
4 instructors
Office staff
expand current facility’s staff; adding addition programming and hours
develop additional office space in other locations throughout Bruce county
develop online supports for current and future students
generate a subsidy program to allow for access to all learners

Local data collected by our provincial Ministry of Education through their annual EQAO assessment shows a growing trend with just 44% of Grade 3 students meeting mathematics expectations along with 50% of those same students lacking the ability to effectively read at grade level just last year.

Her personal teaching experiences and observations confirm this data to be accurate. There are simply far too many students in our school systems who are lacking basic life skills pertaining to reading and math.

Their enrollment has been at or near capacity since just 6 weeks after they opened in mid- August. Currently, they are sitting at capacity with a wait list that continues to grow each week. In order to deepen our abilities to support as many struggling students as possible, they will need to carry our vision of bridging the gap in student learning into the future.

Here's how they plan to invest not only in their business and students but also in our communities, generating employment opportunities:

Expansion of our current facility, allowing for greater hours of operation, additional subject areas, and a broader age range of students
Opening satellite offices to generate opportunity for a broader spectrum of communities to be included
Fostering an online platform to provide
Developing a subsidy program to provide equal opportunities for all students

By investing in The Bridge Learning Center, you are not only investing in our youth. You are investing in your future.

Let’s work together to grow the next generation.

Let’s work together to expand their skills and empower them do great things.

Let’s work together to build a better community, the one we all call home.

A Message from Your President

Since retiring four months ago, I’ve finished many projects I had postponed. I am finally able to make deliberate choices about how I want to spend my time. Some decisions were expected, such as spending extra hours on the bike trainer to get ready for a 200 km ride from Barrie to Inverhuron or returning to Bridge after 40 years by joining the Probus Bridge Group on Wednesday afternoons. One choice, however, is a bit strange. I am back to rug hooking.

As my Grade 10 English teacher, Mr. Donnelly, used to say, “We are the sum of the stories we tell about ourselves.” How I came to learn rug hooking is one of those stories—interesting, if somewhat meandering—and one I often tell when trying to explain the dynamics of the family I grew up in.

When I was around 9 years old, my dad bought a second-hand sailboat. I honestly don’t think he was that interested in sailing. My father had always been quite competitive with his older brother Ted who sailed a catamaran. My mom, who had dated Ted before she dated Dad, was always eager to take Ted up on an opportunity to go out with him on his boat. What Dad did not realize was that on our side of the lake we got very little sun in the late afternoon and she loved to sunbathe. I am pretty sure that Mom had no interest in sailing.

The sailboat, an Alcan Petrel 951 which was eventually named “Flipper”, was launched and my dad spent hours out on the lake trying to entice my mom to come on board. With its tiny aluminum benches and a centerboard which came up to almost the boom, this sailboat was not conducive in the least to sunbathing. Also, as the name might suggest, the craft was not entirely stable, and this did not exactly instill confidence that one would stay dry during an outing.

So every weekend my Dad would drive up to the cottage where my Mom and I spent the entire summer and after completing the day’s jobs, head out on his own to the lake to try to improve his sailing skills, probably with the goal of luring my Mom on board. And my mom figured that Dad had finally found a hobby that he really liked. So, she took up a project to bring his new supposedly beloved hobby home.

Her mother had done some rug hooking and had a catalog, so she ordered “Sailboat at Sunset”. My mom didn’t knit or crochet and sewed only as much as was necessary to replace buttons or hem pants. Though I don’t think she took much joy out of the project, it was eventually finished and given to my dad for his birthday. It was hung for a few months in my dad’s music room at home, before it was moved to the living room of the old cottage.

About three years later we stopped launching the sailboat and it sat at the edge of our property down near the water. We relaunched it once again in 1994 when my dad found out that my girlfriend Janice liked to sail and that summer, he again spent a number of hours back on the lake. For Christmas Janice and I got my dad new sheeting for the sailboat. We fell into the same trap; it wasn’t sailing, which was important for my dad. It was having someone to sail with. And if you look at the picture of the rug carefully you will note two people sitting in the boat.

A couple of years later, one of my mom’s high school friends, Linda, announced that she was expecting her first baby. Linda was into what I like to call “yarn‑sports” and had apparently knitted a beautiful bassinette blanket for my mother when I was born. Buoyed by this example—and by her own confidence in her rug‑hooking abilities—my mom ordered a 7' × 4' oval baby rug and waited for it to arrive.

Years later, having married a bona fide yarn‑savant, I can see that the mistake wasn’t merely the size of the project, but a fundamental failure to understand the relationship between yarn gauge and time. When the kit finally arrived, there were fewer than four weeks left before the baby shower. Mom got to work at once, but after two weeks the rug was still less than a quarter finished.

Seeing a practical solution to the problem, my mother turned to child labour. After a quick lesson, I was assigned to work from the opposite side so we could advance toward the centre together. A week later we were still shy of halfway, and my mom correctly identified the real obstacle: I was spending far too much time at school. For the final week of the project, I was therefore according to the note my mother wrote—“sick.”

We worked fourteen hours a day, our hands rubbed raw from the canvas, until yet another creative solution emerged—my mother’s archery gloves. With two days to go, completion finally seemed possible, but only with a full sprint to the finish. So, after pretending to go to bed at 11 p.m., I waited until I heard my parent’s door shut and snuck back down to the job. By 7 a.m., I latched the final strand—just past the halfway point to the centre. I had beaten my mother and won rug hooking.

I had also mastered the all‑nighter, a skill that would prove useful in high school, university, and early working life. When my mom took on a project, there was virtually no chance it wouldn’t get finished. Still, she never tackled another rug‑hooking project until our own children were born—and those were much smaller.

So that brings me full circle to my current latch hook project, which I only recently started in retirement. This time, however, the goal is not to finish in the least possible time or to measure progress by how quickly the work moves toward completion. Instead, the focus is on the simple pleasure of the activity itself—the rhythm of the hands, the quiet concentration, and the satisfaction of seeing something slowly take shape. It is surprisingly rewarding to be able to just putter at a project with no deadline looming, to pick it up when the mood strikes, and to put it down again without any sense of guilt or obligation. There is no finish line to race toward, no urgency to justify the time spent. This slower, more meandering approach to new undertakings is something I am still learning to embrace, and it has become one of the most novel and genuinely rewarding aspects of retirement so far.

Terry Koehler

News

Nominating Committee

If you’ve been attending the General Meetings over the past couple of months, you know that the Nominating Committee has been formed for this year. The Members of the committee are:

Janice Koehler
Tina Shier
Craig Brown
Georgia Kreager

We have already been working hard at trying to find new representation for the Management Committee. The specific roles that we’re hoping to fill are:

Vice President
Members At Large
Technical Chair

All of these positions are important for the success of the club, but this is especially true in the case of the role of Vice President. This position is critical for the future of the club. Without a Vice President, the existence of the club is at risk.

As mentioned before, there is a lot of flexibility with these positions. Please don’t feel as though we can’t work around personal limitations such as traveling, limited computer awareness or shyness in front of crowds. Next year, our president won’t physically be in the country for much of the winter!

In summary, if you think that you or someone you know might be interested in any of these positions, please approach someone on the Nominating Committee. We look forward to hearing from you!

Janice Koehler, Past President

Join us for Lunch after the AGM!

Based on the positive response to the 10^th Anniversary bagged lunch following the 2025 Annual General meeting, we will be having a post-AGM luncheon this year. It will be a hot lunch catered by the Legion Ladies who did our Christmas Luncheon, so we are expecting a great meal at the Legion. In addition, there will be musical entertainment provided by local country artist and storyteller Jim Metzker. Lunch tickets, which will be $15 per person, will be sold by our Hospitality Committee volunteers starting in March. You can either reserve your tickets via e-transfer to tres@hapc.ca or visit the sign-up table which will be open during upcoming general meetings.

Ways to Stay Up to Date with Probus Canada

Podcast - Go to the Probus Canada website, scroll down to the footer, and click on the green Spotify icon.

Facebook - News from Probus clubs in Canada.

YouTube - two new videos that were developed this year.

Newsletter - latest issues of the PROBUS Canada Connections.

Probus Global is a network of Probians from all over the world who meet quarterly on ZOOM. If interested, you can visit the Probus Global website and follow the route to become a member at NO cost as long as you are a Probus member.

April Probus Activity Updates

Golf

Depending when the golf courses open in April it may be time to get the golf clubs out and dust them off.

Ulli Kaempfe - Coordinator

Hiking

An e-mail will be sent out shortly to members with details of first hiking event plans starting in mid-April.

Vernon Freer - Coordinator

Pole Walk

The pole walking group will start our season of walking on Friday May 1st at 10:00 am weather permitting. If you are interested in joining the group, or for more information, please contact jferguson12@eastlink.ca. Walking Poles are not mandatory. Come and join us for some fun, social walks!

Joan Ferguson - Coordinator

Potluck

15 ladies attended the Potluck lunch on March 23rd. A delicious assortment of dishes were enjoyed by everyone. The next Potluck will be Monday, May 25th at Hope Church.

Marybelle Schumacher - Coordinator

Local and Area Events

Council on Aging Grey Bruce has a new website

It is your resource and advocate for an age-friendly Grey Bruce

We are a forum of community leaders and older adults who promote age-friendly communities, positive aging, and inclusion. We focus on empowering and engaging older adults through shared resources, research, and information workshops.

Grey Roots Museum Spring Lecture Series 2026

April 8: Gold of Another Kind – The Lost Legacy of Georgian Bay

April 21: The History of the Anishinaabe in Canada

Visit their website for full details and schedules.

Visit their website for full details or contact your local branch.

Visit their website for all upcoming Library programs and events.

Town of Hanover Parks, Recreation & Culture Community Guide (Fall 2025/Winter 2026):

Of special note, see page 22 and 23 for the Senior Active Living Centre (SALC) Programs, funded by the Ontario Government through a Senior Active Living Centre Grant.

Hanover Recreation and Culture events and programs webpage