MEMBERSHIP MATTERS: recognizing your milestones

The MFNC is a friendly club; our president’s wolf howl signals the start of each meeting, cutting through the buzz of conversations that fill our meeting room in normal pre-COVID times. Connecting virtually, we miss that person-to-person bonding.

We used our June 2021 meeting, our send-off to the summer break, to highlight our nature enthusiasts with 10 or more years of participation in the club. We also wanted to acknowledge the contributions of founding members Eric Ridgen and Michael Runtz (still our president! We would love to have had each person stand for applause but had to settle instead for a reading of their names.

You’ll find those below as well as the criteria we used to determine our numbers.

How we arrived at the numbers

• For our 2020 AGM, we decided to recognize members with 10 or more years of participation in the club.
• The names we included are based on records that start with the launch of the club in 1984 and continue up to and including the 2019-20 membership year.
• Grouping the memberships by five-year milestones, we found we had nature enthusiasts with memberships ranging from 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, 30- and 35-years. All those we’ve named in this report had renewed in 2019-20, which we decided would be a requirement. If you forgot to renew in 2019-20, your membership clock/count goes back to 0.
• We decided, though, to stop the clock for three members who joined way back in 1984; although not 2019-20 members, we feel they came close enough.

Although we did our best tracking the data we may have gotten yours wrong; if so, we apologize. Let us know and we’ll have a second look. Early club records were not digitized.

Special thanks to Brian Voss and Roger Magoon for helping me compile this information. 

Karen Runtz

Name	Milestone
Dave and Mary Forsyth	10
Jim Lougheed	10
Lyn and Jim Arsenault	10
Cathy and Ken Stewart	10
Maureen and Paul Carrier	10
Bernard Gesicki & Rona Bloomfield	10
Liza Badham	10
Brian Carson	10
Olga Janoska	10
Mary Ellen Jack	10
Roger Bird	10
Susan and Chuck Gillan	10
Jan Mansfield	10
John Grierson	10
Jeff Skevington & family	10
Barb and Neil Robertson	10
John Willis	10
Garry and Linda Lackner	10
Karen Runtz	10
Susan and Chuck Gillan	10
Vern and Judy Seligy	10
Estelle Rother	10
Stephen Duff	10
Norm and Barbara Chouinard	10
Nadine Tate & family	10
Sandy Bickerstaff	10
John Willis	10
Anne and Barry Burnett	10

Name	Milestone
Mary Marsh	15
Donna Metcalfe	17
Linda Sewell	20
Brian and Lucy Voss	20
Art Goldsmith and Janice Tripp	20
Brian and Lynda Wright	20
Ruth Bowes	25
Janny De Jager	25
Karen Krueger	25
Murray and Judy Borer	25
Diny and Ken Mcnairn	25
Fred Runge and Barbra Smith	25

Name	Milestone
Ryan and Julie Zimmerling	30
Renee Stewart	30
Michael Runtz*	35
Eric Ridgen*	35
* Founding members

Name	Milestone
Tony and Mary Crowe**	20+
Betty Anne Beckmann and family**	20+
Jim Ferguson**	20+
Steve Duffield and Joan Shute	Life Membership
Donna Metcalfe	Life Membership
**Although not current members, these 1984 members participated for more than 20 years.