Halfway through our 50th

As you are reading this, we are closer to the end of our 50th anniversary year than we are to the start of it. As with most of our previous 49 years, the 50th has been a particularly good year, and we have many of you to thank for this.

If you hadn’t heard before, a very high percentage of our members in Calgary and Medicine Hat are also volunteers. It could be said that many of our members are not only here for what benefit Unison provides them, but they are also here to create value for other members and other seniors who benefit from our classes, groups, and programs.

I suppose that I should also mention that many of our members are also donors and financial supporters of the programs we offer.

When we have a special season or holiday fundraiser or appeal it is not uncommon for 70 to 80 per cent of the online donations or cheques, we receive each week to come from Unison members.

I thank you for this. We are a charity and less than half the cost of operating the centres and programs are covered by support from all three levels of government. The majority comes from members like you.

This year to celebrate our 50 years of operations and to highlight some of the new things we are excited about, we are holding a 50th Anniversary Gala. This will be a very special event and we have engaged the support of Rob and Dave Kelly to help us with the program for the Gala.

Dave Kelly will also bring his talent as the MC for the event. In this edition of the paper, we have the first ad promoting the Gala, but as we get closer to the event you will find teasers about what you might see or experience attending the 50th Anniversary Gala showing up in our social media and on our website.
Also, if you haven’t checked out Andrew’s 50 Stories for 50 Years, you can find them all in the Bulletin Board on our website (https://unisonalberta.com/bulletin-board/).

The links to all the stories are near the top under the heading “50.”

There is a new and exciting story every week.

Larry Mathieson is the president and CEO of Unison Alberta.