December 14, 2022

Gord's message: TBN welcomes new Board members

The new 2022-23 Board was elected at the AGM in November. Joining the Board are new directors Trish St. Pierre as Member Experience Director and Ken Lackman as one of our two Directors-at-Large. Moving on to a new role is Alice Chan as Communications Director. More details below. I look forward to working with the new Board.

The complimentary membership policy has now been formalized and is available on the website. I encourage more members to volunteer and take advantage of this policy. I would be happy to give out many more complimentary memberships.

On another note, the Canadian Elite Track cycling championships will be held at the Milton Velodrome in the first week of January. Members of the Canadian National team will be racing, possibly including, but not confirmed, Olympic sprint gold medalist Kelsey Mitchell and scratch race World Champion Dylan Bibic. Spectators are free to attend and may walk in any time during the event; there is no ticketing. The velodrome is spacious and the crowds for this event are small so social distancing is easy. If any TBN members are interested in meeting up at the event, please email me at president@tbn.ca and we can arrange something. Here are the event details.

--Gord Irish, President

Your new Board of Directors for 2022-23

TBN members unanimously elected the club's new Board of Directors for 2022-23 during the Annual General Meeting, held Nov. 23 via Zoom. New to the Board are Trish St. Pierre (Member Experience Director) and Ken Lackman (Director-at-Large No. 2). Continuing on the Board are:

  • Gord Irish, President
  • Catherine Newhook, Secretary
  • Jean Dell’Agnese, Treasurer
  • Alice Chan, now Communications Director (moving from Member Experience Director)
  • Martin Lansche, Technical Director
  • Dennis Szilvasy, Touring Director
  • Marc Giles, Social Director
  • Lora Flanagan, Overnight Trips Director
  • Andrew Paterson, Education Director
  • Robert Elvin, Director-at-Large No. 1

Two Board members chose not to continue during this term: Todd Race (outgoing Communications Director) and Brian Lam (outgoing Director-at-Large No. 2).

The full list of Board members, including biographies, is available here.

Also during the AGM, Gord Irish and other directors offered overviews of the past year. More events were scheduled due to the easing of COVID-19 restrictions; revenue increased by just over $10,000; and member participation in events increased by 2,155. Touring Director Dennis Szilvasy thanked all of the hard-working event coordinators and leaders. "Without their volunteer work there would be no club," he said. Gord acknowledged the three Volunteers of the Year and Dennis Szilvasy presented them with gift cards on behalf of the club: RJ Peterson, Mireille Macia and Tony Lau, for their brilliant organization of a hugely successful Cyclon 2022 at Western University, following two years of frustrations with COVID lockdowns. We will be returning to Western in 2023. The draft minutes from the AGM are available here.

Volunteer-of-the-Year honourees RJ Peterson (top) and Tony Lau. Not pictured is the third recipient, Mireille Macia. Many thanks to all for their dedicated work on Cyclon 2022. 

Seeking volunteers to help oversee the new design for TBN jerseys

Communications Director Alice Chan is looking for volunteers to join a committee to explore options for a new design for TBN jerseys and, possibly, other related cycling kit clothing. Volunteers will work within the team to seek a supplier, review proposed designs and follow through the project to completion. If you have experience in this field and/or in marketing, please contact Alice.

Zwift meetups update

The TBN Zwift Meetups have started up for the fall/winter season and have been well attended on our regularly scheduled M/W/F morning rides. We have had 23 rides already this fall. I realize that the weekday morning time slot is not ideal for everyone, so as an experiment I will schedule Tuesday and Thursday evening rides from 7 pm to 8 pm for a number of weeks. If we get a critical mass of TBNers in the evening, it will become a regular club activity.  

With now more than 160 different routes in Zwift, from gentle to extremely strenuous, we will probably not repeat any routes in a given year. Many of our rides will use the "rubber band" feature in Zwift to keep all participants close together as they ride. We use Discord to participate in a group voice chat while we ride. We must be having fun, because the time flies.

If you are interested in joining us on the Zwift rides, please email virtualrides@tbn.ca with your Zwift experience, and your preferences (day, time, distance and duration). If you have questions, include your phone number in the email and I will call you to answer your questions. 

Details about upcoming Zwift meetups will be posted on the TBN Calendar. For more information about the meetups and about how to get started, see https://tbn.ca/zwiftmeetups.

--Martin Lansche, TBN Zwift Meetups Program Coordinator

Wild Apricot login changes

Personify did send out a notice that a password strengthening feature would be rolling out on Dec. 4. Clearly that has not happened yet. TBN members should be prepared to change their passwords when it becomes active. The TBN home page will be updated if and when we get updates from Personify.  

Ride Leader reports

The hosting platform on which we run the Ride Leaders Report application was upgraded recently, with a side effect that email copies of any report submitted between Nov. 14 and Dec. 5 were not sent out to the usual recipients. Rest assured that your report info was recorded in our database. You just did not receive an email copy of the report when it was submitted. Program Coordinators have been provided with all the missing report data for this time period.

TBN cross-country skiing update

Time to break out the skis & wax. Cross-country skiing, if Mother Nature is agreeable, will be starting soon. Saturdays will be our ski days so as to not overlap with Sunday hikes. (I may throw in the odd mid-week ski.)  During December and January we will be driving to the different venues on our own, and I intend to have a link for car-pooling so watch the website for news on that in the coming days.

For February and March, OCEY (Outdoor Club of East York) has graciously offered us seats on their "SKIBUS". But you must register here no later than Jan. 16, for any of the trips listed below, if you wish to use the Skibus. For all inquiries go here. Bus and ski trail fee is $60 per trip; bus, ski trail fee and ski rental is $88. Snowshoe trails and fees are also available. Because the pickup times and locations may not be favourable to some, the bus is only an option and driving on your own/car pooling will still be possible. The scheduled dates and venues (details will soon appear on the TBN calendar) are:

  • Feb. 4, Scenic Caves
  • Feb. 11, Highlands Nordic
  • Feb. 25, Mansfield Outdoor Centre
  • March 11, Highlands Nordic
  • March 18, Arrowhead Provincial Park

Complimentary Membership Policy

There have been a number of questions posed to board members recently about TBN's policy/process for awarding complimentary membership to our active volunteers. We have been following a policy/process within the board since at least 2018 (with a few very minor changes in the intervening years), but it has not been formally shared with the club membership until now. Click  to view our current Complimentary Membership Policy

Need to cancel a registration for an event?

We have tried to clear up the process for cancelling your event registrations. We have updated the How to Cancel my Event Registration page on the website. The links in each event now show


for registered users. See the web page for more details.

Martin Lansche, Technical Director

Reminders

Event Registration: Please remember to Login to the TBN website prior to registering for our Events. If you are not logged in, the system does not know who you are, and will only offer you the Guest Rider registration choice. Also, when you are logged into the TBN website, a lot of members-only content appears.

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