Membership

Five years have passed since I first tried to join the Lions Club in Bonavista; today the Bonavista Lions Club serves as a great example of how not to attract membership.

Prologue

I arrived here in February 2019. In May that year I met a member of the Bonavista Lions Club. “I’d like to join” I exclaimed. “I’ll have someone get in touch with you” was the response.

Two years passed.

I met another member of the Bonavista Lions Club. “I’d like to join” I exclaimed. “I’ll have someone get in touch with you” was the response.

Three years passed.

In February 2024 I heard, by accident, of a Bonavista Lions Club social afternoon for Seniors, I attended, said “I’d like to join” and was ushered into a back office where a secretary filled out a form and told me to get a Code of Good Conduct (or similar) from the local RCMP.

This was a lengthy error-prone procedure. I needed a signed letter from the club, and after two months called to check on its progress; the letter was hand-delivered the next day. I should be less patient.

Back to the RCMP where, two months after my first visit, I learned that there was an auxiliary form that I should have mailed off to the Provincial Court in Clarenville stating that it was OK by me if the RCMP searched my records.

I mailed off the form.

A month later I phoned the Provincial Court and learned that (a) they had no record of my application and (b) It could all be done electronically.

I downloaded the form, typed in my answers (using Microsoft Paint, of course), found the photograph I had taken of the letter from the club secretary and realized that the letter was not signed – a requirement of the member-vetting procedure much loved by The Bonavista Lions Club.

From the Bonavista Lions Club web site I obtained the only visible email address - the email address of the web master, who happened to be the membership secretary, who filled out my application form at the senior’s social back in February. I emailed asking for a signed letter.

After two weeks I used the web site to obtain the phone number of the secretary. The first number rang with no answering machine picking up; the second number is to a Fax machine.

I phoned one of my two contacts who said she “knows nothing about it”.

I gave up. And yes, by now you will have gathered that I am in a bit of a snit.

Thesis

The primary obligation of any society is to nurture its membership by introducing new members.

This page is a Clear Thinking page, so let me emphasize that I mean “any society”, and not “any human society” or “any primate society” or “any mammalian society” or even “any society of animal life” .

The primary obligation of the species of grass, carrots, trees, monkeys, and members of the Bonavista Lions Club must be to encourage new membership.

This is true of the local (wherever you are) Gilbert and Sullivan society, Scottish Dancing, Alcoholics Anonymous, The United Church Women’s Group, Manchester United Soccer club, …

It matters not what you, as a group or club or society, get up to; your group will die - cease to exist - if you do not attract and envelope new members.

In case you are wondering, we humans enjoy sex because that is our way of creating and nurturing new members.

In case you are wondering, an apple core pushed into a tin of soil, will produce ten to fifteen seedling trees because that is its way of creating and nurturing new members.

Practice

I quit Scottish Country Dancing after two years when I realized that I was, after two years, still the newest member. (which is why, when something went wrong, I was singled out for attention!)

I quit a Gilbert and Sullivan society when I realized that the principal and secondary roles went, almost always, to members of the family clique.

I have given up becoming a member of the Bonavista Lions Club because if their members are so indifferent about whether a new member makes the grade or not, then they are not likely to be diligent in welcoming ideas from that new member. Let’s face it, after living in Bonavista for over five years, when I attend my first meeting of the Bonavista Lions Club, I will be seen as “new to town”.

RCMP Clearance …

… is a farce. The RCMP check back just five years.

Of course by now I have been in Bonavista for five years (1,997 consecutive nights sleeping in Bonavista), but suppose I had applied to join back in 2019, after only three months in Newfoundland?

Where would the RCMP go to discover my track record of child molestation, purse stealing, pensioner muggings, drug use, car theft, arson, and all the other things of which I have not been convicted during my stays in Toronto Canada, Singapore, Perth, Adelaide, Newcastle and Wollongong in Australia, London UK and Paris France. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of kilometres wandering around the U.S.A.

Update

After getting all that off my chest I regrouped, collected all the forms, passport, driver’s license etc and trudged up the hill once more to the RCMP.(35 minutes each way on foot, according to Google Maps)

They are closed; on vacation until July 21st

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