Newsletters

November 2025

Our November Speaker is Jean Rowcliffe

Ms Jean Rowcliffe (who lives in St Marys) is a retired nanny, formerly employed by the Royal family. She began working for them as a 17 year old servant at Buckingham Palace in 1974.

After 18 months she briefly returned to Canada, before heading back to England to attend the prestigious Norland College (the training ground which still produces nannies for the Royal Family including the Prince and Princess of Wales).

After she graduated in 1979, her previous experience at Buckingham Palace helped her land a job as a nanny, helping the Prince and Princess of Kent raise a young Lord Frederick Windsor and Lady Gabriella Kingston.

She spent four and a half years at Kensington Palace before continuing her career in other fascinating locations around the world.

What was it like working for the Royals? You'll have to attend the November Probus meeting to find out!

Our October Speaker was Lynn Weimer - Planning for your Health Care Future

Lynn Weimer, a volunteer for Hospice Waterloo, talked about Planning for your Health Care Future.

As a Registered Nurse, she worked for 35 years in Intensive Care Units, where she witnessed firsthand the distress that families suffered when they had to make decisions regarding their loved one's care.

Here is the link for her Advance Care Planning 101 presentation: https://advancecareplanning.hospicewaterloo.ca/advance-care-planning/

In Ontario Advance Care Planning involves two steps:

Step 1: Deciding who will make future health care decisions for you if you are unable to. This will be your Substitute Decision Maker(s) or SDM(s). In Ontario there are two ways to decide about your SDM(s):

1. Confirming your automatic future SDM(s) from the hierarchy (a ranking list in the Health Care Consent Act) OR

2. Choosing someone else to act as your SDM(s) by preparing a Power of Attorney for Personal Care (a legal document)

Step 2: Having conversations with your SDM(s) and others to share information about what’s important to you, your wishes, values and beliefs, and anything else that you think will help your SDM(s) understand how you would like to be cared for. These conversations help to guide your SDM(s) to make healthcare decisions that are based on what you would want for your healthcare.

It’s never too early to start Advance Care Planning conversations.

Before we make decisions, we have conversations. We often talk about what is important to us in planning for our children’s education, family weddings, our own vacations, retirement, and even a trip to the store. We also need to have conversations about the kind of health care we want when we are seriously ill or at the end of our life.

These conversations make a big difference

Research suggests that the benefits of Advance Care Planning can include improved satisfaction with health care received and decreased stress, anxiety and depression for the SDM(s).

A Message from Your President

Beyond the Paycheck: Reflections on What I Gained from my Career

As I close in on my full retirement date, I started thinking about what I am most grateful for in my 30-year career. In reflection, much of it revolved around the opportunities that I have had to work and interact with people from diverse cultures around the world. These exchanges have often challenged my world view, and though sometimes uncomfortable, the changes in my mindset resulting from these interactions has been invaluable.

As an only-child with a father who worked abroad, I traveled to several countries before I turned 10. My most enduring memories are not of the landscapes or tourist attractions, but rather of the many dinners and weekend gatherings shared with remarkable individuals. These individuals, both residents and expatriates, shared a distinctive trait: a profound curiosity about their surroundings coupled with a thoughtful respect for local cultures. In short, they were captivated by the culture surrounding them and wanted to share this perspective with others, especially an impressionable young person like me. Although I had other family ties to the engineering field, I am confident that their infectious curiosity influenced me and played a significant role in prompting my transition from a first career choice as a computer programmer to a path in engineering consulting.

I started at Hatch in 1995, working on the Smelter Expansion at Stillwater Mining's Columbus, Montana site. Collecting data at the site for extended periods showed how much Montanans' views differed from mine. Nearly everyone at the smelter also managed a farm, and most ran a guiding or trapping business as well. Although I never saw myself as "city-folk," I came to understand that my opinions on gun ownership and government were not consistent with the realities of rural Montana. The key takeaway is that sameness does not equate to rightness, nor does difference necessarily imply wrongness. Although our perspectives on the world were fundamentally different, this never prevented us from collaborating effectively. Through our shared professional experiences and open-minded interactions, we discovered common ground and learned to appreciate each other's viewpoints. Over time, these efforts led to the development of strong and enduring friendships—ones that were rooted in mutual respect and a willingness to learn from each other.

Exposure to more diverse cultures also led to new perspectives. Back in 2005, I was commissioning a gas-fired power plant near the Turkish Bulgarian border and staying at a “rustic” hotel next to a mosque. I quickly realised there was no need for an alarm clock—the sunrise call to prayer always woke me up. The juxtaposition of traditional and modern elements in both the town and the plant was particularly striking to me. Cellular signals enabled my Blackberry device to send group messages—a feature not yet available in Canada. However, travel from the town to the plant was often delayed due to ox-drawn carts on the muddy paths that functioned as roads. As I was responsible for instrumentation check-out, my first stop on site was the instrument shop. To my surprise, it was a simple cart in a tent powered by a small diesel generator and lit by one bulb, run by a subcontractor named Yusuf. Several vendor representatives were appalled by his reliance on such basic technology and often expressed their dissatisfaction about him during the daily planning meetings. I tried to be a bit more circumspect and got to know Yusuf a bit during chai break. He was an out-of-work university electrical engineering professor from Ankara, who spoke English reasonably well—certainly much better than I spoke Turkish! After work, we enjoyed exploring the local cuisine and culture together; even for him, coming from the Asiatic region of Turkey, this area was new and unfamiliar. A mains power switch-in error resulted in an electrical surge, which caused severe damage to many of the plant instruments. This included all chemical metering pump control boards within the water treatment facility for which I was responsible during the commissioning phase. Contact with the supplier in Canada confirmed that obtaining replacement boards would require a minimum lead time of six weeks. Needless to say, I was a bit upset that day at chai break. Yusuf asked if I minded if he took a look, which of course I didn’t. The next day when I got to the plant, he tracked me down quickly and he was positively beaming. It turned out that only one small component on each board had been damaged and it was an identical part that could be found in the power supplies from old tabletop radios, and he had found 30 of them at a local consignment shop. A day later, and at a cost of under $50, we had them all back up and working. This let me finish my assignment on time and get home without a substantial delay which was, in the days of having two kids under 7, very much appreciated. Not surprisingly, the other vendors who had not invested in a relationship with the plant contractors did not receive as much help as that I did with my control boards.

I kept in contact with Yusuf who returned to teaching after his contract was up. In 2016, after the failed coup, I lost all contact with him. With nearly 500,000 incarcerated after the coup including vast numbers of those in the education system, my assumption was that he was amongst that number. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only time I have seen beautiful places and people caught up in events of our times. I first visited Venezuela in 1997 I made several connections that showed me the vibrant Latin American culture particularly in the capital Caracas. By 2008, things had gotten more troubled as democracy was stepped back and food and energy shortages became commonplace. Many of my Venezuelan clients facing these challenges, left the country finding opportunities elsewhere. Quite a few ended up in the United States, and I wonder how many are affected by the upcoming termination of the Temporary Protected Status designation for Venezuelan citizens. In the Ukraine, near Odessa, the client’s protocol officer – a survivor of the Holocaust took us to tour one of the largest former nuclear missile sites that had been decommissioned under the Budapest Memorandum. Besides the eye-opening target maps showing where missiles were aimed and anti-western propaganda, it is hard to forget the lunch with the protocol officer whose name escapes me. He talked about his lack of belief that the Western powers would honor their security commitments and of course that played out with both the Annexation of Crimea and the more recent war which has featured conflict within a few kilometers of the town where I was housed. In reflection, what I learned that both peace and democracy which have been all I have known from my lived Canadian experience are neither assured nor permanent.

So, as I look forward to my imminent full retirement, it’s with a desire to stay engaged, and to continue to meet people who can challenge my world view. I realize in my career I have been fortunate. That simply doing the job, with an active curiosity, gave me this opportunity. In retirement, I will need to more actively seek this. I am excited to begin this new stage of my journey and glad to have all my new friends at Probus to share it with.

News

Probus Christmas Turkey Luncheon

Wednesday December 10th
11:00 to 1:00pm
$35.00/person.
Sign up and payment (cash or e-transfer) will commence at the November Probus meeting. Please contact Tina Shier to reserve your ticket.
There will be 130 places available.
Only 28 spots left, with most tables having only one or two spots at them.
A wait list will be kept if capacity has been reached.
Guests will be allowed after interested Probus members have signed up & paid.

Ways to Stay Up to Date with Probus Canada

Podcast - Go to https://probuscanada.ca, scroll down to the footer, and click on the green Spotify icon.

Facebook - News from Probus clubs in Canada: https://www.facebook.com/probuscanada/

YouTube - two new videos that were developed this year: https://www.youtube.com/@PROBUS-Canada

Newsletter - latest issues of the PROBUS Canada Connections at: https://www.probuscanada.ca/news.

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

November Probus Activity Updates

19 Club Activities:

Book Club, Bridge Club, Cycling, Dinner Club, Eating for Your Health, Film Club, Genealogy (New Activity) Golf, Hiking, Kayaking, Knitting & Crochet, Pole Walking , Pot Luck, Scotch Tasting , Scrabble, Snow Shoeing, Theatre, Travel, and Wine Tasting

Activities Recently Cancelled

Both Cross Country Skiing and Scrabble activities are no longer running due to lack of interest and participation from members. Thank you to Ruth Linnen for all her personal time and work as Scrabble Coordinator over the past years and providing this challenging brain activity for members to enjoy. Thank you to Terry Koehler for recently taking on coordinator duties for Cross Country Skiing. The weather and snow conditions are major factors for skiing and member participation has been very minimal. However in the future if any members should be interested in participating and/or coordinating either of these activities please do not hesitate to contact Dianne for further details.

For Activities Information and Details:

Visit The Hanover Area Probus Website at www.hapc.ca/activitieslist for details and information on these activities. If you need assistance or have any questions contact Dianne Mather, Activity Group Chair at act@hapc.ca

Dinner Club

An African wine tasting provided by the Pepplers along with the October Dinner Club menu of South African foods at the Farrows (see pictures below). Four new members have joined the Dinner Club group and we’d like to welcome Katie Mueller, Barb Lawrence, Dawn McCulloch and Sharon Kennedy. The first dinners will be held at the homes of Janice and Terry Koehler, Margaret and Stephen Peckham and Karen and Bob Farrow on November 6th. We look forward to the new Probus year of trying delicious new recipes.
Coordinator: Karen Farrow

Hiking

In October five members of the hiking group travelled to Stoney Island Conservation Area and enjoyed a cool, sunny fall day. It was a great day for wandering along the shoreline. The trails were open but they continue to work on the area. There were also 5 participants at the Bognor Marsh. The conditions were perfect for a fall hike.

Potluck

The group met on October 6 and 18 ladies attended - there was an abundance of good food! The next Potluck lunch will be on November 24th at 12 noon at Hope Community Church. The theme will be Christmas dishes/treats.

Local and Area Events

This month we have so many amazing events! Check out our introduction to meditation, medication management, wet soap felting and crafternoon programs! We will also have MPP Paul Vickers here for a Coffee With program on November 10. Saturday drop-in events now weekly! Visit their website for full details and schedules: https://hanoverlibrary.ca/calendar/

For all our events, visit https://library.brucecounty.on.ca/what-s-happening/events-calendar or contact your local branch.

For more information on all upcoming Library programs and events: https://www.westgreylibrary.com/programs-events

Town of Hanover Parks, Recreation & Culture Community Guide (Fall 2025/Winter 2026): https://www.hanover.ca/sites/default/files/2025-08/2025%20Fall%20%26%202026%20Winter%20Community%20Guide_0.pdf

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. The grant covers a number of free fitness classes plus a Speakers Series (see below).