A Message from our Executive Director

Welcome to spring! The most important date on our April calendar is our AGM which will be held on Wednesday, April 23^rd at 1pm. We need everyone’s support to attend. The quorum that is required is 25 people and we have 3 spots open for our Board of Directors. Please consider joining our Board as it is critical that we have a full and diverse board to guide our organization during these turbulent times. Thank you to the Manor Village at Signature Park for sponsoring the lunch that day.

We will be a polling station for the Federal Election on Monday April 28^th. Therefore, all programming will be cancelled on that day. We will do our best to reschedule the cancelled programming.

As we approach Bow Cliff Seniors’ 50^th Anniversary later this year, we will be introducing special fundraising events. Our first announcement was the 50^th Anniversary 10-day Caribbean Cruise February 2 – 12, 2026. Thanks to our President Judith, we were able to secure 15 rooms for up to 30 people at very special rates. We are almost sold out. We are planning to host a gala celebrating our 50^th Anniversary in November and a 50^th Anniversary 50/50 raffle. These fundraising initiatives are a large undertaking. We are asking for additional volunteers to join the committee. Please let the office know if you would be interested in joining the Fundraising committee.

Thank you to everyone who supported our record-breaking spring bridge tournament on March 15^th with 62 participants. Thank you to Chartwell Retirement Residences for their sponsorship. Our first ever Hand, Knee and Foot tournament will be held on Saturday April 12^th. Please check with the office for more program and event information.

Our focus on fundraising is increasing in importance as unfortunately we were unsuccessful in getting a couple of grants that we applied for, and we need help to offset our rapidly increasing expenses. Coffee is up 30%, utilities are up 25%. March’s carbon tax was just under $400, and we just received an unbudgeted $1,500 invoice to change our fire monitoring from 3G to 5G. To maintain programming at current levels, we have no choice. We must ask for more support in the form of donations, sponsorships and fundraising event success.

Thank you to all our volunteers, especially our lunch bunch volunteers. Also thank you to Dave Marchant for help putting together the new armed chairs that we just received. We hope everyone enjoys the 90 new armed and non-armed chairs that we got thanks to a grant we received last year. We couldn’t operate without all the volunteers’ incredible support.

Note: we will be closed on Good Friday, April 18 and open Easter Monday.

On behalf of Elanor, Liz and Despina, we wish you all a blessed Easter!  John