December is here...

Well I had hoped to be writing about my trip to Montreal for the Federal Liberal Leadership Convention in this post but that will not be the case as I stayed in Saint John. My original plan was to go to Montreal but with the continuing flooded basement saga it didn't happen. My basement is beginning to be re-built but it is a very slow process. My tenants are still living in hotels and my adjuster continues to be a real pain. Hopefully by the next post I will be able to say it is all finished. The City also has yet to claim liability. I did manage to catch most of the convention on television and it looks like it was a great time and as I write this post it looks like either Stephane Dion or Michael Ignatieff will be our next Federal Liberal Leader.

The last two weeks have been very busy. Besides my job and two courses I had to deal with a lot of issues around the rebuild in my basement. Amongst all that chaos, I had many community meeting and events that I attended.

Last weekend, I spent all day Sunday in a planning and team building meeting with FUSION Saint John Inc. as we installed a new Steering Committee. The original founders of FUSION Saint John Inc. stepped off the Steering Committee and so we had some training for our new members. I am the 2nd Vice Chair and look forward to the continued development of FUSION over the next year. Hopefully it's success will continue and become even greater.

On the Saturday of last weekend, I spent all day with a friend gyprocing the ceilings in my basement. Quite honestly I have never done it before so it was sort of a learning experience. My body will remember it for some time to come as I could barely walk the next day. It is still not done as it needs to be sanded for a second time and another coat of plaster applied and then of course it has to be primed and painted.

On the Friday of last week I attended a presentation at the Regional Hospital on the Safe Injection Drug Site in Vancouver. Basically, a building has been set up where drug addicts can come and inject their drugs in a supervised setting. It is a form of harm reduction as the users get clean needles and there is less risk of overdosing due to the supervised nature of the site. There are smaller successes too such as less garbage and violence in the streets. They are having much success with the model.

Last Tuesday, the Greater Saint John Community Foundation had their 30th Anniversary Celebration at the Imperial Theatre. I helped to create the audio visual presentation for the event and that took quite a bit of time as well. Overall though, the event was very well attended and I have heard many positive comments about the event. The Foundation has donated over 4 million dollars to various charities in Saint John since its inception 30 years ago. Kudos to them!

I also attended a meeting of the Many Faces of Violence Awareness committee 2007 last week. For those of you who read my posts you may remember that I was a part of this initiative last year. I have joined them again as I strongly believe in the need to raise awareness around this issue. For more information on what we did last year check out www.mfv.ca.

Finally I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to a story I read about in the Telegraph Journal last week. It was a story about a 10 year old girl named Hannah Taylor who founded the Ladybug Foundation. Over 4 years ago, at the age of six, Hannah started campaigning to fight poverty. I was truly touched and inspired by this story. Many of us in society could learn a lot about compassion and our duty to others from this young girl. I hope to bring her to Saint John to speak in 2007.

That is all for now. I am off to bed as I came down with a cold yesterday. It is the first in quite a long time so I guess I was due. It probably couldn't have come at a worse time but isn't that how life always works. Have a wonderful week!