16 www.georgianbay.ca GBA UPDATE Summer 2023 PRESIDENT’S REPORT Continuity, Collaboration, and Change It is a privilege to be serving as your GBA president, and just a little daunting, given the shoes I have to fill. Rolfe Jones, the outgoing president, dedicated his heart and soul to GBA over the last two years. He has done as much as possible to ensure our Bay is protected for generations to come and has earned a little downtime to enjoy the fruits of his labours. Rolfe has served on the Board since June 2014 and has extensive institutional knowledge that I will gratefully tap into as he serves in an advisory capacity over the next year as the past president. He has also agreed to continue to chair the Coastal Protection Committee, which represents a file that continues to grow in importance. As for me, my home association is Bay of Islands, so I am located in the farthest of the GBA associations. My family came to the Bay in 1973, when my Toronto-based professor parents bought a dilapidated fishing resort in the North Channel called Moredolphton Lodge. I would spend every summer of my childhood there, first playing on the rocky shores of our islands, then later working alongside my parents at what we called the Island Lodge. When it became clear that neither my sister nor I could (or would) carry on the business, we sold the main island, keeping the smaller island with its one cottage as our family “camp.” The Bay feels like a part of my DNA, and I am grateful for every day we get to spend up there with my husband, two teenage boys, my sister’s family, and my mother. I joined the Board in the fall of 2018 and was almost immediately recruited by Rolfe to join the UPDATE editorial team. There’s a reason why so many of our past presidents were UPDATE editors – there is no better place on the GBA team to get up to speed on the issues facing our Bay and our members. When Rolfe became the president, I moved into the editor role, supported by both Rolfe and Allison Needham of West Carling Association. Over the last two years, Allison has been a superb advertising and managing editor, and her articles about the history of the Bay have added a fascinating dimension to UPDATE. I’m always excited about what I get to learn whenever she has an article to contribute. She steps into the role of editor after this issue, and I trust she will continue to create content that our members read from cover to cover. The GBA Board members collectively donate thousands of hours of their time in service to GBA, and I look forward to continuing our work together. And they are all supported by our talented staff who help keep things going in many small and big ways. That alchemy of dedicated volunteers and committed staff is what allows us to tackle an outsize number of issues for an organization of our size. At this time of transition, I have been thinking about the importance of continuity of organizations like GBA in order to effect the kind of long-term change that requires years, or even decades to come to fruition. In many cases, no one person can follow through an issue from start to finish – we need to be able to pass the baton to the next person in the relay race and trust that they will know what to do with it. I am honoured to be trusted with the GBA baton. By Liz Phillips, GBA President
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