Meet The Crew!

Name: Ali Gothard
Title: Prime Minister (We're Canadian, Eh!)
Age: 23  Sign: Scorpio
Location: Newmarket

Manager of internet Crew elements (i. e. - e-mail list, voting site, event reminders, fund raising co-ordination)
Known for: Taking dares, fortune telling, bad jokes, extreme silliness, "the pudding incident" (hence, Armedwithjello), Ali's World web site, being opinionated.
                                Web Site: http://www.geocities.com/armedwithjello

Name: Jacqueline Emes
Title: Secretary
Age: 20  Sign: Aquarius
Location: Aurora/North Bay

In charge of: Yuk Yuk's Comedy Night, Guiding contact
Known for: Being a social butterfly, uninhibited dancing, singing Guide songs, Scouter for 2nd Trout Creek Beaver Colony and Venturer Company, being the Queen of Sparkles.
Web Site: http://www3.sympatico.ca/themes/jackie.html

Name: Diana LaFave
Title: Treasurer
Age: 20  Sign: Scorpio
Location: Newmarket

Figures out how we can pay for all our ambitious goals (England, Australia, Yuk Yuk’s, car convoy to Ottawa, getting registered in Scouting!)
Known for: Being very quiet (especially around guys!), having fun with my friends, Crew member with the funkiest ear jewelry, sandals every sunny day of the year, even when it gets cold!

Name: Lisa Janik
Title: Squire
Age: 19 Sign: Cancer the Crab
Location: U of Toronto or Permanent home in Windsor

Known for: Being the shy and innocent, a good Squire who always gets her tentmates breakfast in bed every morning at camp, causing bruises, playing rough, being confused, all nighters.

Name: Matt "Matteroni" Wood
Title: Squire Muffin
Age: 18 Sign: Cancer
Location: Hamilton

Known for: Procuring cups of ketchup from confused snack bar attendants, making and guarding the Tang, keeping Cheese in line, being bootylicious, being God of UCOM, naming the fish Dog, the Tragically Elbow.

Web Site: http://www.angelfire.com/yt/UCOM/

Name: Cheese
Title: Squire
Age: 18 Sign: Aries
Location: Hamilton

Known for: Being named after a dairy product, Vice God of the Universal Church of Matt, inventing the recipe for Tang cake, Supernova, being the cheesiest, kung-fu fighting, saving earth from purple monkey dishwashers, sharing marshmallowey goodness, keeping Matt in line, starting inappropriate conversations on GO Transit.
Web Site: http://www.angelfire.com/on3/Cheesey/

Name: Gillian Gothard
Title: Math Geek, Slacker, “Hey You”
Age: 21 Sign: Taurus, "no smoking"
Location: Newmarket, Waterloo, Hamilton, etc.

Known for: Being quiet, looking very serious, running the snack bar at the Pas Philos' Newmarket barn dances, having a strange obsession with math, writing many many haikus, thinking things are monkeys, reading books all day, having a silly name, holding parties at Brian's house.
Web Site: http://gilligan27.tripod.com/index.htm

Name: Brian McMurachy
Title: Fish Keeper
Age: 22 (37) Sign: Virgo
Location: Hamilton, Woodstock

Known for: Juggling fire, playing Frisbee with a whistle disk, claiming to be 37 years old, holding "Yay, Gilly " parties, being one of the girls, Buttons.

Name: Carrie Clifton
Title: Crash Test
Age: 24 Sign: Virgo
Location: Sunderland

Known for: Superb wine making skills, the ability to provoke hysterical laughter, jumping out of planes for kicks, being our ORC Regional Rep.

Name: Julie Corrigan
Title: Foreign Correspondent
Age: 25 Sign: Scorpio
Location: Manchester, England/Traralgon, Victoria, Australia

Known for: Rover On The Go articles, missing the Olympics in Aussie to visit America, climbing a waterfall, 50 cent pieces, being scarred for life by a snow angel.
Web Site: http://www.geocities.com/girlvic2002

Name: Ellen Reid
Title: Advisor
Age: Ummm… Sign:
Location: Newmarket

Known for: Always having good advice, staying calm in a crisis, Crew Newfie, making sure her Rovers are well fed, “You guys can do anything as long as it’s legal.”

Name: Brian Powell
Title: Mascot
Age: Who knows? Sign: Scorpio
Location: Newmarket

Known for: “Hey guys, party at our house!”, King of the Barbecue, accident-prone First Aider, always having cool gadgets to play with, gas, his funky walking stick, being camera happy.

In the past year, our Crew has more than doubled in size, despite the fact that most of last year's members moved away to enter university. Still, those members that moved continue to participate in the Crew on a regular basis. Meetings are difficult to arrange as we are spread out over such a large area. Instead, we meet over the internet in a number of ways. We have a central, Crew-only web site that contains our discussion board, voting station, and links to web sites of use to our Crew. We all use ICQ, and are able to chat live about the current issues being discussed. When we aren't online at the same time, we have a Crew e-mail list through Yahoo! Groups which allows us to reach every member by sending to only one address. Our e-mail discussions are archived on a central site, and act as the minutes of our meetings. All this makes communication among members very easy, considering many of our members change homes every few months and are difficult to reach any other way.

For the most part we do our service individually, and we have a handful of larger events we gather for during the year. Several of our members are Scouters for Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, and Venturers. One is also a Guider for Sparks. At Christmas, four of us volunteered to stand in the mall with the donation kettles for the Salvation Army. Other organisations our Crew members have worked with include the Newmarket Youth and Recreation Centre, Multiple Sclerosis Society, Cancer Society, and the Women's Sexual Assault Helpline of York Region. We are currently looking into assembling poppies for the Legion, which would double as a fundraiser as the Legion pays for that as piecework.

A large part of what our Crew does focuses on travel and adventure, which bonds us as friends. Our first trip was to England in 2000, then in 2001 we piled into a VW bus for a 5-day road trip to Ottawa on Victoria Day weekend. This year we are discussing the possibility of an extended camping weekend in St. Jacob's, and next year's goal is to go to Australia to visit Julie, a former member who will have returned home by then. Our other international connection is that we are listed as a Reception Team on scouttraveller.org, so travelling Scouting and Guiding members can contact us to meet during their travels. In 1999, we had a Venture (yes, they leave the last R off the word) Company from Manchester, England visit us, and we held a dance for them and accompanied them to Niagara Falls. It was that Company we visited on our trip the following year.

Our fund raising tactics vary widely, and we'll try anything if it's legal and we think it'll work. We do two barbecues a year at Loblaws, and have sold flower bulbs. We have run many successful dances which had the added benefit of promoting Rovers to the local youth. We are hosting a Yuk Yuk's comedy club night June 14, 2002 (contact me for tickets, only $20 each!) and are discussing the logistics of selling frozen food products such as pies and cookie dough.

Our in-person meetings are few and far between, and are usually planned alongside a social gathering. These gatherings can take the form of an annual Christmas party, Murder Mystery party, barbecue, or anything else we can think of to celebrate. At our parties, each member invites a guest along. More than once, this has resulted in new members joining the Crew!

We attend whatever Moots we can, usually Snow Moot, Sonic Boom Moot, ORC Moot, and Moot Moot, although we are not limited to these four. Several of us attend ORC, and we are also working with another local Rover Crew to restart the District/Region Round Table.

We have discussed the idea of running our own Moot someday, but I don't think that's in the cards for our Crew for at least a couple of years yet. As you can see, we keep ourselves quite busy as it is, and this is with our 12 members spread out all over Ontario, from Windsor to North Bay!