ROCK THE BARGE CONSTRUCTION WELL UNDERWAY, WHICH IS MUSIC TO EARS OF ROTARIANS

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

GRAVENHURST — Keeping tabs on Rotary community projects (all thanks to donors like you) is a like predicting the weather. It’s always changing.

Last month in Bracebridge they raised $29,000 for Ukrainians and to bring another Syrian family to the Heart of Muskoka.

Here in Gateway to Muskoka the big news is the start of construction on Rotary Rocks the Barge.

The giant amphitheatre seating and shoreline project at Rotary Gull Lake Park is well underway with completion expected by June in time for the immensely popular summer sounds series program.

Good weather until late this week allowed construction crews to get a head start on the project. Photos Kathryn McGill Rotary

This should draw thousands more live music lovers this year alone.

And make the park more attractive in drawing other events as well as for those who simply enjoy watching the sun rise in the east above Gull Lake.

The $500,000 club and town project includes five rows of rock seating —100-metres wide — overlooking the Barge and public swimming beach.

The bank buffer and first row of seating are already in place — after two weeks of work — without any hillside ill effects thus far.

Rotarians, town councillors and staff got a good look from on the Barge this week instead of the traditional shovel-turning.

See the Rotary Rocks the Barge website here.

Rotarians, town councillors and staff got sneak peak the project from on board the Barge this week.

It’s just more of the community ‘Service Above Self’ that 1.2 million Rotarians worldwide perform day in and day out to keep big and small towns in touch with friends, neighbours and visitors.

Just like Gravenhurst’s Rotary TV Bingo each Wednesday night.

Once a month the thousands of bingo cards sent out for sale ($10) to local stores and venues — where the five games can be seen and played each 7 p.m. — are folded, stuffed and sealed into envelopes for distribution in Bracebridge and Gravenhurst.

That’s in addition to their dozens of school bursaries, youth mental health help funding and 700 bikes handed out in Cambodia this winter.

Don’t stop there.

After the recent passing of member Jim Goodwin. who for decades collected pop and beer cap tabs to melt down and turn in to wheelchairs, member Bonnie Dart has picked up the job of collecting the thousands in pounds it takes.

She was at bingo stuffing this week with big bag full of — you guess? — thousands.

If you have any cans, twist off the tops, save them and find a Rotarian who will gladly collect them and pass them on to Dart.

Rotarians Bonnie Dart and Marsha Barnes, left, show members the big bag of tabs collected so far while they were at bingo stuffing Thursday at the Catholic church.

Not to be out-down, this week member Rob Abbott brought along his ingenious arms-length trash picker-uppers, which he hand-makes.

He and wife Allyn can regularly be seen around town grabbing garbage off the streets.

She says the wooden tongs that look as if they’d be great as chop sticks wouldn’t work for that.

“Because you can’t fit them in your mouth.”

Rob Abbott and Tom Long try out chop stick-style trash collectors, which Rotarians have used to clean up the town.
Stage right the view from the Barge shows how far north the seating will be overlooking the beach area.
Rotary committee members Ken Little, left, Pam McDivitt, Barb McCabe, Dave Reid, Kathryn McGill and Richard Augustine were all smiles this week. Can’t wait to see their faces when project is done. They say final donations are still welcome through any Rotarian.
Soon music lovers will be sitting on row upon row of these slabs of granite.
A temporary works yard at Gull Lake Rotary Park is hard proof that Rotary’s 85th anniversary project is well underway. You’ll see more of it till at least the end of May.
Barb Robillard, centre of Barrie, presented a $1,000 cheque to Rotary Rocks the Barge last week. Her grandfather Dr. Walter Kendall was the club’s first president in 1937. He ran the TB hospital at what became the Muskoka Centre.

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