Greetings to all Members of The Sunshine Coast Healthcare Auxiliary gathered here today!

 I am so very sorry that I am unable to be with you on this important occasion but today is my home auxiliary’s Annual Picnic and also a General Meeting, and as I have missed the last two meetings of The Nanaimo Auxiliary due to BCAHA business, I did not want to miss this important meeting as well.

Firstly, I wish to congratulate all of you for a most successful year.  In viewing your website, I see that you raise funds in many different ways…….through the Gift Shop, various Thrift Stores located up and down the Coast, the Loans Cupboard, specific fundraising events, etc. etc. but just as important you also provide personal volunteer services, and compassionate care and comfort, to the residents of facilities such as Shorncliffe and Totem Lodge Extended Care.  For everything you do in order to promote and advance the quality of healthcare in your communities, you deserve a pat on the back!  As the BCAHA President and a citizen of this province, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Secondly, I wish you good fortune in your renaming of the Thrift Store today.  Change in any way is simply an adjustment……… an advancement…….. and a mere transition.

Several famous philosophers have described what change means far better than I can and I quote…….”The more things change, the more they stay the same……………The times change and we change with them…………All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves.”………And then there was Bob Dylan who sang…….The times, they are achangin’…………”

Today marks a change; a new name for your Thrift Store; a day of renewed promise and commitment, a day of which to be proud!

Warm regards,
Lynda Avis
BCAHA President