Category Archives: Guests
When Opportunity Knocks…
At busy Toastmaster Clubs like VanCore, the speaking roster often fills up quickly. You snooze, you lose. But that doesn’t mean spaces don’t sometimes open up at the last minute. It’s like getting a call back from the restaurant French … Continue reading
Meet Your Executive
As this week’s meeting wound up and another VanCore election was in the books, our fearless new leader Katherine (Kate) Hallanzy announced she was heading over to Murchie’s for tea and who would like to join her? “Looks like the … Continue reading
Don’t Miss It: June 19 is VanCore Election Day
Folks, it’s time for the annual election of VanCore directors. Here’s your chance to put your stamp on the club’s leadership team. As per Toastmaster International rules, the past president – in our case, that’s Susan – drew up the … Continue reading
Ummmmmm….
Don’t quite know how to say this but, um, we’re backsliding. Or it could just have been one of those days for the good burghers of VanCore, a generally linguistically careful bunch. “It was very ‘um’-y and ‘ah’-y today,” said … Continue reading
Shape Up
A good rule of thumb at VanCore is: when you see Kate is signed up as Table Topics Master at the next meeting, be there. Kate is a teacher, and teachers (the good ones, anyway) are always stretching to get … Continue reading
Mentor Telepathy
You don’t see many people learning to shoe horses at their daddy’s knee these days, or to can peaches in granny’s parlour. We used to be a culture of apprenticeship. Now we just watch The Apprentice on TV. (How did … Continue reading
Judging the Judges
If you’re training food critics, you probably send them to Tojo’s, not McDonald’s. Critics rise to the level of the quality of what’s served to them. (In theory.) If you’re holding an evaluation contest — as VanCore did this week … Continue reading
To all the hopeless romantics…
This week, before giving the toast, Dylan made a confession: “I am a hopeless romantic.” He was about to jet off to Toronto to visit his girlfriend for a couple of weeks. He had arranged the plane ticket so that … Continue reading
L’chaim! (“To life!”)
We all have our crutches — all of us, no matter how experienced a speaker we are. Past-president Susan’s crutch is a sometimes overdependence on notes. But Susan didn’t look at her notes even once during this week’s great speech. … Continue reading
Next Meeting at Murchie’s: Coffee’s On Us
A great speech often just boils down to “show and tell.” Remember this great tradition from elementary school? Every day one kid brought something from home and gave a short presentation about it. (Four to six minutes, red light at … Continue reading
VanCore Toastmasters 