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By Roger Lauzon
As Fall starts, hopefully you have a positive start on a new academic semester . . . and get to enjoy cooler weather!
Once again, we need your help to fill two positions! We are looking for a WURA volunteer, who can assist us with Technical Support, to join the WURA Executive. Please see the "Request For Interest" article further on in this e-Bulletin. Also, please start thinking of volunteering for the 2023 WURA Executive and Committee positions, with the "heads-up" request from the Nominating Committee for the end of October.
Meeting with VPs: WURA Executive members informally met with the University VP’s in August to discuss our input to the University’s Strategic Plan. In particular, we suggested that WURA members could, possibly, have a more active role on campus and, further, proposed making UWindsor an "Age-Friendly University" (AFU). (Stay tuned for an article in our next e-Bulletin on "Age-Friendly Universities".)
Website Changes: In addition to producing the latest issue of the e-Bulletin, the Communications Committee, led by Gwen Ebbett, has been working diligently over the summer to review and update the WURA website. Although the general design, as dictated by the University, remains the same, the format and content has been updated and revised. Please check out the website: https://www.uwindsor.ca/retirees-association/. The Committee would be happy to receive any comments you might have on the Website. Thanks to Richard Dumala, who has been instrumental in the review and revision!.
Social Committee: From the WURA Social Committee, the trip to the local winery in the summer was cancelled, because of lack of interest. Our members still seem to be hesitant to meet in person.
New Ideas Welcomed! The WURA Executive is trying to come up with some other ideas on how to meet, either in-person, online or in a "hybrid" (combined online and in-person) format. The President’s Tea with Retirees, delayed some two years, will possibly be scheduled during the last week of October. Please watch for our upcoming notice. As well, if possible, we are thinking of holding a hybrid AGM in November. We feel that we will need ITS technical support to pull this off. And, hopefully, a Holiday Luncheon in December, which our members have really missed. Please stay tuned for announcements regarding all of these events!
Constitutional Review: The WURA Constitution Review Committee has been busy for the last year drafting an updated WURA Constitution, taking into account all of the changes to WURA over the last couple years, in particular the establishment of more WURA Committees and the advent of online meetings. An internal WURA Executive group is working with the eight WURA Committee Chairs to verify their activities prior to obtaining Executive approval on the updates. Once completed, the new draft WURA Constitution will need 2/3 approval in a mail-in ballot from the WURA members.
New Members: After personal invitations were sent to the new 2021 retirees, many have joined WURA in the last few months and contacted Norm King with their annual dues. We have updated our WURA e-mail list with these new addresses. For those who still owe their annual 2022 WURA dues, another reminder notice has been included in this e-Bulletin.
Finally, if you have any ideas or suggestions regarding what WURA should be doing, please send me or any WURA Executive member an e-mail. Please stay safe and healthy this Fall, as we are still trying to successfully emerge from the after-effects of the pandemic!
Roger Lauzon
President, WURA
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REQUEST FOR INTEREST
By David Palmer
We are coming up on the Fall Meeting, when it’s time for us to elect a new Executive for the 2023 year.
The WURA Executive and its Committees have maintained an impressive record of accomplishments in spite of the constraints of Covid 19. We look to continue that forward movement in fostering connections between and among retirees, maintaining and strengthening their benefits under the Collective Agreement, and liaising regularly with the University administration. The Executive meets monthly, and prepares information and actions for the membership at its Spring and Fall meetings. The Committees work throughout the year as needed.
There are two positions of particular importance that we look to fill as soon as possible:
- Webmaster. This person mentors the student who maintains the website and, thus, should have knowledge of web design and management. Let us know if you have the expertise to help with this crucial position.
- WURA is establishing a Facebook presence. We need two people to administer the group. Richard Lewis will be one but we need another. Contact Richard Lewis for more information (rlewis@uwindsor.ca) or call 519-962-1078.
Please consider supporting WURA by serving on the Executive (meets monthly) or on one of its committees (meet as needed).
Watch for a separate request coming soon in your email. This announcement will have a list of the positions open for nomination, along with details of how to submit your offer to serve.
Thank-you, from the Nominating Committee,
David Palmer, Chair (dpalmer@uwindsor.ca)
Dr. Norman King
Dr. Barbara Thomas
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Communications Committee: Website Undergoes Scrutiny, Revision
By Gwendolyn Ebbett, Chair
 Over the summer, the Communications Committee has been working hard updating the WURA website. Although the design of the website is dictated by the University, we have been, arduously, reviewing the content and revising it as required. In addition, we have made changes which -- we hope -- will make it easier to navigate the website. We still have a few pages to complete, but we would appreciate your feedback on the changes we have made to the site. Do you find it easy to navigate? If not, where did you find difficulty? What do you like, or not like in the content or format? Did we miss anything? Have a look at the website -- https://www.uwindsor.ca/retirees-association/ -- and let us know what you think. Please send your comments to me gebbett@uwindsor.ca
Richard Dumala has been acting as the webmaster and we are grateful that he is willing to assist us in this way. However, we are still looking for a new webmaster, so if any of you are looking for a way to assist your fellow WURA members in this, please contact me.
Thank you and Happy Fall.
Gwendolyn Ebbett
Chair, Communications Committee
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Pay Your Dues – Or Else
By Stuart Selby
If you have not yet paid your WURA dues for this year, this is your third and final reminder – or else. Or else what, you may ask? Well, we will not send Sonny Corleone, but maybe Norm "Crazy Legs" King can make you an offer you can’t refuse, because University retirees can refuse anything. Nor will we report you to Equifax to destroy your credit rating because they would just laugh at anyone who forgets a mere $25 debt – and only a moral debt at that. So we will have to try to haunt your dreams until you send your cheque to the Treasurer or use the online payment system.
Please send your cheque for 2022 dues made out to WURA for $25.00 to our Treasurer:
Norman King
#103, 1935 Normandy St.
LaSalle, ON
N9H 1P9.
You may also make a direct deposit if you prefer through email to: nking@uwindsor.ca.
If you wish to save yourself some time and avoid being late next year, you may also pay for more than one year (2022 + 2023, or for 2021 + 2022 if you missed last year). And if you have forgotten your present dues status, please send an email message to nking@uwindsor.ca, or write to him at the above address.
At this point in the year, only about half of us have paid the 2022 dues, which is about as bad as not casting your vote in an election. But if you have paid your dues, thank you.
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Go West, Old Man
by David Palmer
 “Go west, young man, go west.” In my case, the quote attributed to several American sources should have read, “Go west, old man...”. Last October, Lonnie and I made the move to Victoria, BC, after pondering it for several years post retirement from the University in 2009. The pull of family, most of whom live here and elsewhere in BC, grew, and Covid added another push, until we made the long drive around Toronto, past Sault St. Marie, across the Prairies, through the Rockies and on the ferry to Vancouver Island.
Windsor was home to me for 50 years, and 32 years for Lonnie, but Victoria had been our native soil, both of us having lived our younger years here. Seeing familiar places again, I related to them at first through the prism of life 60 years ago—”I remember riding my bike here”, “so-and-so used to live there”, “that old house is still there!” But soon, life combined those memories into the daily round of visits with family and old friends, going to concerts and getting familiar with how things work (wrestling with BC health). Victoria’s seductive climate (aside from atmospheric rivers and a heat dome) pressures its growing population—and its natural beauty: more and more houses spring up, most on properties that barely contain the buildings themselves. The excellent bus system is looking more attractive as auto traffic gets crazier.
It hasn’t taken long to start integrating into the community. I’ve been subbing as organist at two churches now, and taking part in a benefit concert at a third. As well, I’ve accepted the Co-President position of the Victoria Centre of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, a very active group that showcases several fascinating organs, one built in 1827 that was shipped from Boston around Cape Horn. Early music is big: I helped prepare singers for a four-day festival celebrating Heinrich Schütz, who lived 100 years before Bach. So, that part of my retirement beyond university life feels the same as in Windsor.
At first, I worried that going back to the womb would lead to feeling sidelined and slipping away from full living. But so far, no: volunteering in Victoria is no different than anywhere else—there's nothing like it to give one a sense of belonging to a community. Lonnie and I have found an excellent fitness instructor (she’s also an organist!), and walking in Victoria is always surrounded by tall firs, oaks or Lombardy poplars, flowering neighbourhoods, and a breeze off the Salish Sea.
I miss mixing in-person with former colleagues from the University, including those I got to know on WURA Executive. However, online meetings bring them close again with a renewed sense of the vibrant community I enjoyed for 40 years in the University of Windsor.
If any of you travel in this direction, we would welcome an opportunity to greet you here, and share Victoria’s high points.
David Palmer
Professor Emeritus
School of Creative Arts
Editor's Note: If you have a story or refection about your retirement in places either far from or near to Windsor, please send it in to us at belman@uwindsor.ca.
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The DailyNews – Have you Missed It Lately?
If you have been missing your daily fix of University happenings – aka the DailyNews – you should know that it is not actually missing. Apparently, the “major computer glitch” (the phrase coined by Kate McCrone) is the culprit here. It seems to have destroyed some systems, including the one that e-delivers the Daily News to many of us. According to the Editor, Kevin Johnson, “The outage blew up a lot of systems.”
There is a solution at hand, however. There is a subscription form available online, at this link: https://www.uwindsor.ca/dailynews/1844040/sign-subscribe. Just fill it out and send it in and, within a short period, you will once again be comforted by the presence of the Daily News in your Inbox.
Happy reading!
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