Rotary Club of Shetland

The first speaker in October was member Ramsay Napier who showed a selection of slides he had taken in Shetland in the late sixties & early seventies. Many of these involved Lerwick Harbour and the great variety of shipping which came and went, especially at the dawn of the oil era. Two in particular struck a chord with older members---a car being loaded onto the “Earl of Zetland” in a wire net for transport to Unst before the days of the car ferries, and a post office van precariously perched on a couple of planks over the stern of the Bressay ferry “Brenda”, again before the RoRo ferries came along.

The following week guest speaker Cathy Hubbard gave a very detailed description of how the Cinema section of the new Cinema and Music venue “Mareel” will operate once the project opens next year. There will be two cinemas holding 160 and 35 seats respectively; it will be possible to show new-release films in Lerwick the same day as they open in London. It will also be possible to show live Ballet and Opera from the leading theatres in the capital, but the needs of special groups in Lerwick have not been forgotten with days set aside once a month for people with impaired vision, for autistic sufferers, and for mothers with very small babies who will be allowed to scream as much as they like!

To round off the month we were delighted to welcome back our District Governor and his wife, George and Mary Berstan, from the Turriff Club. One of George’s tasks during his year of office is to visit every Club in his district (North Scotland and the Isles) so he has been constantly on the move since the beginning of the Rotary Year (July). His visit to Shetland marked number 70 out of a total of 88 Clubs, with a membership of 3264 Rotarians. George told us of his visit to the Conference of Rotary International in San Diego, where District Governors representing over one million members from all over the world were gathered. Two themes of great importance were discussed---that of membership of Rotary and the difficulty of attracting new members to join, and the “Final Push” to rid the world once and for all from the scourge of Polio, hopefully to be completed within the next two years.

As already reported, the Shetland Rotary Club and Voluntary Action Shetland sponsored an award ceremony in Lerwick Town Hall recently where the group category was won by Michaelswood at Aith and the individual category was won by Emily Shaw. This event is evidence of how much importance the Rotary Club places on the young folk in our community.