Mr. George Brookman attended our launch event on March 22 and encouraged us to share the story more broadly. Below is the link to the article that appeared in our campus news. The hope is that you may be able to distribute this article to all Rotary Clubs in the district, since the story of James Wheeler Davidson is of broad interest to Rotarians.
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This James Wheeler Davidson collection at the University is amazing. I held a pamphlet from the 1920 President’s Ball at the Palliser. The list of songs for the evening were “The Him Book” and all of the “Rotary Anns” were listed as Mrs. Fred or Mrs. John etc. How times have changed. We learned that Davidson spent $250,000.00 in 1903-04 to make this trip with his wife and daughter and Rotary International referred to him as the “Marco Polo of Rotary” As I listened to the comments and looked over the collection of pictures, newspaper clippings, etc., I could not help but think about the impact that Rotary has had on this community over the past one hundred plus years. It is an amazing legacy and I was only sorry that we didn’t have a massive turn out of Rotarians in the room to appreciate what Tom Hickerson has done for Rotary by accepting this collection. We were both berated by Leslie Abramson who is Davidson’s grand-daughter-in-law because neither Tom nor I had our Rotary pins on that day.
Anyway, this is really a huge tribute to Davidson but also to Rotary. We should even make a point of getting the new General Manager at the Palliser up to the University to see this collection.
Those are just my thoughts.
George
George Brookman| C.E.O.
West Canadian Digital Imaging Inc.