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President's letter
Undoubtedly the outstanding event of the year for Abbeyfield Canada was the visit by our Royal Patron, HRH The Prince of Wales, to the Abbeyfield House in Ottawa. This was a great honour, especially as it was HRHıs first visit to an Abbeyfield House outside the UK. As you can imagine, there are many many groups vying for a Royal visit and not just those associations, regiments etc. of which he is the Royal Patron. We tried eight years ago when he visited Toronto but without success... we even suggested to the Royal Visit Office that some Port Hope residents go out in a boat when the Royal Yacht, Britannia, steamed by en route to Kingston. Camil Dufort, Canadaıs sole representative to the reception given in February by the Prince for over 300 Abbeyfield volunteers, was introduced to HRH and took the opportunity to say how wonderful it would be if he visited a House in Canada. He replied that a trip to Canada was being planned and he turned to his secretary who nodded. From this end we contacted the office of our National Patron, the Honourable Hilary Weston, and the Ministry of Canadian Heritage. It all came together and the visit was arranged.
PARTNERSHIP COURIER
This publication of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporationıs Centre for Public-Private Partnerships in Housing Carried excellent coverage of the Royal Visit. Partnership Courier is a must-read for anyone in Housing.
NATIONAL WEBSITE
www.abbeyfield.ca has been completely re-done and we hope you will visit it. We are receiving many e-mailed inquiries from potential residents, staff, and people wishing to start an Abbeyfield. The anonymous nature of e-mail gives no clue as to where the inquiry is coming from so we often have to ask for an old-fashioned street address to which we can send literature by old-fashioned mail.
DONATION OF FREQUENT FLYER POINTS
We read recently that civil servants may now accept frequent flyer points. (It is a mystery to me why they were not allowed in the first place; were the government auditors afraid that civil servants would fly from Ottawa to Toronto via Mexico City in order to gain points?) We have made inquiries about the donation of Frequent Flyer Points and our understanding is that they may be donated to a charity (such as Abbeyfield!) in amounts that will qualify for a journey, and the cash value of that journey qualifies for a charitable receipt. The size of Canada and our limited budget makes it impossible for us to fly directors across the country to visit House openings, to seminars, to meetings etc. We also have a Canada/UK Housekeeper exchange scheme that would benefit from frequent flyer passes.
SUSTAINING MEMBERS
We are grateful to all our donors but I would like to draw your attention to our Sustaining Members group of donors. They undertake to make a donation every year, in recognition of which they receive regular informal updates in addition to the newsletter. We hope other donors will consider ticking the Sustaining Member box on the donation form on the back page of this newsletter.
ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST
I canıt imagine a trendy London architect now living in a glorious Mews cottage in Chelsea even thinking of moving into one of the ghastly council flats he designed. Fortunately Abbeyfield Houses have avoided the public housing utilitarian model and instead look and feel like homes. Many Abbeyfields have been started with an elderly relative in mind: sometimes that elderly relative has been oneself. Count De Mezey donated his Scottish-baronial heritage house in Victoria to Abbeyfield on condition that he would live there. More recently, in Armstrong, BC, Peter Unrau donated his house and has become the first resident. In other cases Societies have been formed with parents in mind, and there are several instances of dedicated volunteers moving into an Abbeyfield House. Surely that is the test... are you building a House that you, down the road, would want to live in?.
