Beyond Words Advanced Toastmasters

Thank you to the guests who joined this superb # 95 meeting at Beyond Words! They left, “a smile blossoming on their face” to borrow the word of the day –Blossoming, from grammarian Trudi.

Guests and members left a smile blossoming on their face. In summary, the club elected a new executive team. To get this presentation in order: Katy Morin, the club president set the tone, taking on her own role. Names of new officers:

President – Davender Gupta

VPE – Gabriel Duguay

VP Membership – Michel St-Germain

Secretary Trudi Yearwood

Treasurer – Shivashree Vysali

Congratulations to the future leaders who will take on their role on July 1^st!

The meeting continued with “Effective Communication” workshop of the Success Communication and Leadership Series manual presented by our new member Michel St-Germain. A delight for the participants. Members learned how to make a Break Out Room – an asset in the TM world for contest, training, etc.

At the end of the workshop, the members present were entitled to a certificate of participation.

Shiva was the Toastmaster of the meeting. She was present and reactive to what was happening.

I presented the Toast by welcoming the positive side of the pandemic – example without it, I would not have known the Zoom platform or its tools.

The club saw a former member come back with them, Artem Ploujnikov, welcome again!

See you at the next meeting!

Register for our next meeting here

As expected, the club held its meeting on Saturday.

To sum up, our toastmaster Linda, who brilliantly embodied this role, opened the meeting with instructions to mute the sound when the speakers speak in order to reduce all noise. Since she endorses it, it must be said that the role has proven its impact.

The word of the day proposed by grammarian Marta Keller “anti fragility” challenged the members. The word is related to the pandemic we are experiencing. It reminds us that we are resilient within us. The word was used by some extremely focused people, well done!

Time keeper, Davender monitored the meeting in order. The colors of the cardboard were very visible so as not to overflow in time.

The speakers: Katy, Marna and Nathalie presented speeches related to the new situation that we are experiencing worldwide and those to different degrees: anxiety, etc.

Speech evaluators: Gaétane, Shiva and Epitace transmitted relevant points so that the speakers would know what was done well and improve their strengths.

For the speech content evaluators: Rosina and Trudi also raised constructive comments which will help to integrate the positive points to put them into practice for the next time. Valuable advice from our member Bonnie Mak, including the role of a voice coach and how to move in front of a camera.

In the role of G.E Francis, reviewed the agenda well. His comments helped our distinguished guests also participated in the round robin reviews.

From our guests, wise advice was delivered by Frederic Maurette to prevent the Zoom meeting from being hacked. There were also words of appreciation from the meeting. Thinking of coming back to visit us: Todd Gatien, Alex from the WOW club, and Priscilla.

The meeting ended with the presentation of the Excellence Award awarded to Marna Murray!

I say that Beyond Words club is anti-fragile, it shows that with 20 participants gathered on a Saturday morning, the members have a common goal in Covid period, let’s stay united!

What a weekend!

The Divisions F, G, H and I contest were held this weekend. Again Toastmasters continues to adjust to the pandemic situation which is forcing the world to find alternatives to continue operating. And that’s what the 120 virtual participants who attended the G Division contest did! Well done!

The contest was no exception! Our members have all performed. Special thanks to the trio, Tanya, Kimberly and Amy, as well as to District 61 Director, Ronald Servant for helping to organize such an event. A success!

It is true that some contestant withdrew at the last minute for lack of being able to have a real audience and hear resounding applause, see faces, hear noises, etc. For others it was the problem of managing technical equipment  bring a microphone, headset (earphones), others still fear being in front of a camera.

Fortunately, this was not the case for our contestants Hélène Vincent and Aamir Shamim. They took up this challenge with bravery! In fact Hélène won first place in the French Table Topics contest! How ease it is to respond and structure thought in such a short time.

Hélène Vincent

For Aamir he delivered a good speech despite the advice of the judges. We wish him good luck for next year and full of creativity

Now let’s see the positions in the other categories;

Improvisation – Français 1st – Hélène Vincent     Discours  – Français     1st- Daniel Gélinas

English Table Topics   1st- Gregory Fine    International Speech Contest   1st- Sabrya Carim

With all these beautiful people and especially these participants, the G Division has something to be proud of. Her club Beyond Words encourages it and goes with her to the next level of contest, District!

Here is the question to which Hélène answered brilliantly and won this contest: “Describe the most beautiful experience you have had”  Imagine what you would have answered, you!

I arrived at the end of this summary of the Division contest but the best would have been that you are sitting in the front row, the contest was not filmed.

See you at the district contest in April, next month, I’m waiting for you!

Toastmasters, where leaders emerge!

Today, I had the pleasure of participating in a page in Toastmasters history.  Word of the day was « Auspicious » chosen by our grammarian Linda Martella. The Toasmaster of the meeting was none other than the initiator of the club who took the lead with this pilot project, Davender Gupta.

Our Table Topic Master was the president Katy Morin who machine-gunned funny and interesting questions.

Saki Kajita our model speaker, member of the South Shore club accepted this challenge without hesitation. She is making history in the G Division to deliver an online speech! Well done.

Our club growth manager Tanya Hall was with us. She wanted to see this 1st virtual meeting in action. Our SAA, Gaétane Ferland was wise in listening to the instruction to wear a different hat. We can’t miss her! Add to that her smile and her cheerful voice.

Other roles: Nathalie Lucas – Interpretive Reading, Timer – Mounina Bouna Aly, Content Evaluator – Marna Murray, Delivery Evaluator -Frank Vigliotti,  and our Secretary, Gabriel Duguay.

The meeting ended with announcements about Zoom training that will follow during the week. The club had a lot of praise for the innovation and the lead in setting the example for the other clubs. Let’s use the pandemic to perform despite everything! Stay tuned for our next virtual meeting.

Smile life is beautiful! Cheers!

I had the pleasure of being Chairperson for this fun meeting. We had a long business session. Nathalie Lucas, VP Membership inducted our newest member, our Area Director Sonia Gaona.

Nathalie Lucas our VP Membership, Sonia Gaona our Area Director and new member and Katy Morin the President of the club

Just after, we had an election for the role of VP Education and VP Public Relations.

I am happy to welcome in our team, Gabriel Duguay, Area 62 Director as VP Education and Sonia Gaona as VP Public Relations.

DTM Bonnie Mak did a great speech about the law of attraction.

Our special guest Kimberly Dueck, Program Quality Director, did a speech about her experience serving as an officer in the District.

Farzaneh Babazadeh who is a member of Mcgill Toastmasters, visited Beyond Words for the first time and took the role of Grammarian.

Farzaneh Babazadeh, our Grammarian for the day

Marta Keller took the role of Toastmaster last minute and did a wonderful job.

DTM Davender Gupta evaluated Bonnie’s speech.

Davender evaluating Bonnie speech.

Another guest, Allan Osborne visited the club for the first time and took the role of Advanced Timer.

Allan Osborne as Advanced Timer

Trudi commenting on the quality of the table topics.

Sonia Gaona, our newest member led a sensational Think Fast session. She even won the Award of Excellence.

Sonia won the Award of Excellence

These four ladies are participating in the organization of the 2020 Conference who will be on April 17-19 at the Queen Elizabeth.

Kimberly Dueck, Marta Keller, Katy Morin, Sonia Gaona

After this non-adventitious meeting, we went for Post-Toasties.

Post-Toasties

Our next meeting will be on February 22nd. I hope to see you there!

There was so much Brouhaha at our last meeting.

The meeting was Chair by DTM Gaétane Ferland with enthusiasm.

Francis Rounding was our Toastmaster. We heard a great speech by Trudi Yearwood.

DTM Bonnie Mak led a fun Think Fast Session, 6 members divided in two teams had to answers Bonnie’s questions.

Bonnie explaining the rules of the Think Fast Session, with the first team, Egidio, Martha and Francis.

The second team, Gaétane, Frank and Shivashree.

Our guest Egidio answering a question.

Frank Vigliotti, our Sergeant-At-Arms, dressed to impress as Santa for our special meeting.

Martha, an experienced member is always ready to answer a table topic question.

DTM Aamir Chamim Choudry participating in the Think Fast Session.

Shivashree Vysali answering her question with a smile.

We finished the meeting early to enjoy the great food prepared by each member.

Our next meeting will be on January 11. See you there!

Happy Holidays!

Another brilliant Saturday morning, Another fantastic meeting at Beyond Words!
This week, we had a lot to celebrate as a club. We were back at our regular meeting place, some of our members back from summer hiatus, we spread the Beyond Words magic to more people and above all, our members are flourishing- We have a new DTM in the house! Congratulations to our VP-Membership Ivan Mose on this  achievement!

Congratulations to the newest DTM in the house ! DTM Ivan Mose being recognized by our president TM Katy Morin.

Alright, back to the meeting! The chairperson for the meeting was Hélène Vincent who started the meeting and introduced the head table. Then, DTM Gaetane Ferland, who was the toastmaster of the day took over, to run the educational session.

Clockwise from top: Chairperson Helene Vincent, Toastmaster Gaetane Ferland, Intepretative Reading by Ivan Mose and Moment of Humor by Frank Vigliotti

We had two prepared speeches:

1. DTM Bonnie Mak presented a speech titled “How I joined Toastmasters?” for CC2-Organize your speech. She spoke about how she had the opportunity to join Toastmasters throughout a span of many years and when she finally decided to take the plunge. We are all glad that Bonnie decided to join Toastmasters, because Bonnie is the charter president of Beyond Words Advanced Toastmasters! 
2.  Katy Morin presented a speech titled “The power of Motivation” as part of the project 4 for the Motivational Strategies path. She spoke about her research into different motivating strategies (Did you know a that a Google search reveals Monetary Rewards or Fear as the top motivation strategies?) and recounted her experience of getting together leaders from two different clubs to coordinate a joint meeting. 

Following the speeches, the THINK FAST! session was lead by DTM Bonnie Mak, who had the speakers put either an Inspirational or a Humorous take on a given topic. The audience got to be the judge and jury, as they provided feedback through flash cards.

From left to right: DTM Bonnie explaining rules of the THINK FAST!, our speakers Juan, Rim and Antoine, Audience providing feedback with flash cards

The Coaching session was led by the General Evaluator, Shivashree Vysali. We had critical and detailed evaluations from our evaluators – Francis Rounding, Juan Gonzalez, TM Gaetane and Shivashree. We also heard the report from the advanced Timer Frank Vigliotti.

Chairperson Helene presents Award of Excellence to Bonnie

The meeting concluded with the presentation of the Award of Excellence, which was won by DTM Bonnie.