District 35

Caryn Swark is a Grade 3 teacher at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts School in Lethbridge Alberta.

Her personal website can be found at http://carynswark.wordpress.com/

An archive of 132 Halos cartoon strips can be found HERE

Caryn Swark is a Grade 3 teacher at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts School in Lethbridge Alberta.

Her personal website can be found at http://carynswark.wordpress.com/

An archive of 132 Halos cartoon strips can be found HERE

Caryn Swark is a Grade 3 teacher at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts School in Lethbridge Alberta.

Her personal website can be found at http://carynswark.wordpress.com/

An archive of 132 Halos cartoon strips can be found HERE

June 22, 2010 (Retired Teachers of Ontario, District 35, Dryden, ON)

by Frank Clarke

A record number of 24 golfers came out to the Tournament this year with a further 13 people who came to join us for lunch.  I believe that is the largest gathering of members we have ever had.  The weather was great and we had a great day visiting and golfing.  The scoring format was pretty much as it has always been but I hope everyone enjoyed themselves in spite of it.  It was a fun day of socializing, golfing, and giggling at the bad shots we made.  Some people actually were rewarded for bad shots.  It’s just that kind of tournament….. very serious indeed.

The big winners this year were the Beautiful Birches (Wendy Weidenhoeft, Ginette Spence, Doug Rettie and Frank Clarke) who dazzled their fellow competitors with a 29-3/4 team average.  Well done group.  As you can see, Doug really likes to win.

Second place went to the Sugary Maples  (Gale Rettie, Thelma Sampson, Andrew Skene, Dennis Bloomfield).  They had a team average of  32-1/4.  Dennis appears to be totally disgusted with his prize but he actually was elated and was wondering how he was going to spend it all.

Third place honours went to the team of Hank Parks, Diane Mason, Jack Bailey, and Barry Sampson.  This group was called the Quaking Aspens and if you watched them putt, you would have seen that the quaking adjective pretty much covered it. 

The fourth spot, and last as far as prizes went was awarded to the Shady Elms.  I won’t even go into how they got their name but this is a pretty shady group consisting of  Edgar Mason, Mardi Plomp, Fay Besselt and Don Dingwall.  As you can see they were happy to get a prize, but they really wanted to be first.  Edgar is just happy to get a hug. 

Fifth Place went to the Crabby Apples consisting of Larry Macklen, George Gerebin, Roy McComb, and Bob Hamilton.  Need I make implications about the appropriateness of their team name when you see this crew.  (Although Bob looks quite happy and isn’t living up to the term “Crabby”)

In every tournament, there are winners and losers.  Well, here are the losers (but only in golf, not in life).  The team was called the Sturdy Oaks ( Susan Clarke, Brian Davidson, Les McPherson, Brian Kenny) but they played just a little bit too well to win under the scoring system that has been developed and finely tuned for our RTO golf tournament.  I’m sure they will be back again next year to try and play less aggressively.

George Gereben won the putting contest again this year.  He is the proud recipient of a five dollar bill.  We were going to give him a putter for his win, but I think the one he’s got is working quite well.

Fay Besselt won the closest to the hole on number 8 with an amazing shot that landed a mere 11 feet from the pin.  AND she made the putt.  Congratulations Fay.

Nobody hit the green at the number three hole again so we transferred the prize money to the Ball-in-the-Water Contest.  There were two winners/losers in that event so they split the prize.  Susan Clarke put her ball in the pond on #7 and I’m not sure where Larry Macklen’s ball went but I’m certain it’s quite clean now.

Merit Travel donated a couple dozen golf balls which were distributed to our golfers and a $250 Travel Gift Certificate to be awarded to a lucky golfer.  Every golfer’s name was put in a hat and Brian Kenny was selected to pick a name.   Edgar Mason was the fortunate recipient of the Gift Certificate.  Congratulations, Edgar and thanks again to Merit Travel for the wonderful prizes.

The hospitality and food were excellent.  Once again Evergreen Golf owners, Rob and Debbie Alderdice and their staff kept us well fed and happy as displayed on the faces of all who attended.

Have a great summer and we hope to see you out again next year.

Caryn Swark is a Grade 3 teacher at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts School in Lethbridge Alberta.

Her personal website can be found at http://carynswark.wordpress.com/

An archive of 132 Halos cartoon strips can be found HERE

June 10, 2010 (Retired Teachers of Ontario, District 35, Dryden, ON)

June 8 2010 (Retired Teachers of Ontario, District 35, Dryden, ON)

At their workshop on Monday evening, most of RTO/ERO’s 47 District web masters received a preview of the new Retired Teachers of Ontario website. Currently undergoing beta testing it is available for view at http://beta.rto-ero.org

Simon Leibovitz, Director of Administrative and Member Services began with an overview of the new features of the new design. this was followed by a presentation on the Content Management System (CMS) upon which the new site will run by Information Technology Manager, Igor Radovanovic.

Some of the new design features are:

*French page to English page will take you directly to the corresponding page and not back to the home page as currently happens;
*There is a contact page;
*It now has a search feature;
*There is a Print feature – text only;
*Text size change is available;
*The Logo takes you to the home page;
*There is a Bottom bar with , ads & classified, boutique, legal notice, site map, contact us;
*Quick link, Highlights and Events sections exist on the home page;
*The top banner has tabs for who we are, join us, our health plan, Programs & Services, publications, and the members centre;
*Finally there is a photo galley from Flickr.I

The Content Management System (CMS)

According to Radovanovic, the Drupal open CMS system was chosen because of it’s open architecture and its consequent lack of a licensing fee.

The system is based on modules. There is a separation of design, structure and content. It is search engine friendly.

What you see is what you get. There are lots of tools and the design can still be changed once the item is published.

The group was also introduced to the Microsoft Communicator system.

Caryn Swark is a Grade 3 teacher at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts School in Lethbridge Alberta.

Her personal website can be found at http://carynswark.wordpress.com/

An archive of 132 Halos cartoon strips can be found HERE

Caryn Swark is a Grade 3 teacher at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts School in Lethbridge Alberta.

Her personal website can be found at http://carynswark.wordpress.com/

An archive of 132 Halos cartoon strips can be found HERE

June 1, 2010 (Retired Teachers of Ontario, District 35, Dryden, ON)