Rainy River Senior Activity Centre (aka: the Depot) August 2022
The Rainy River Senior Activity Centre is located in the West end of the old Train station
at 201 Atwood Avenue in Rainy River, Ontario.
DISPELLING MISCONCEPTIONS:
1: A person from a neighbouring community said recently,
“I’d like to join the Senior Depot, but I don’t live in Rainy River.”
*We welcome all of our neighbours in Morson, Bergland, McInnes Creek, Pinewood, Sleeman and points between to become members and take part in our activities. In fact, we have had members from Kenora and Nestor Falls in the past. If you are 55 or older, we would love to have you join us.
The more members we have, the more ideas and talents we can share and the more quality activities we can provide.
2: The town funds the Senior Centre?
*We are not funded by the Town of Rainy River.
The Province requires the municipality to provide a small percentage of our costs on an in-kind, or cash basis, such as photocopies, clerical help to apply for the Senior Active Living Centre (SALC) grant, etc. This grant pays our rent to the town for our space in the Depot Building, as well as fees for cleaning, municipal audit fees and other municipal expenses.
For the last number of years, our membership fees, donations, and money raised from workshops and card games have covered all of our day-to-day expenses.
This year the town received funding from SALC to build a safe wheelchair ramp but were not able to approve our request before the deadline passed at the end of June, so moving forward, we will continue to request it as well as an automatic handicap access door for our centre. This will be an enormous help to seniors who have not been able to access the Senior Depot for games, luncheons and craft days.
The kind folks at the Rainy River Fix It Club have offered to build a ramp according to code if we can provide the materials. The members of the Depot are prepared to provide lunches to the workers when this is able to go forward.
We were happy to have a visit from Municipal Counsel, Pat White and Dawn Whiting at our June meeting. Dawn is our regional representative in Kenora of the Ministries of Tourism, Sports/ Seniors and Accessibility. She was able to clarify many questions about the SALC grant that the town receives every year on our behalf.
In July, Dawn was joined by two more regional advisors, Sarah McKenzie (Dryden) and Kim Lacroix (Thunder Bay) to provide an information and training session to people in the area, (not just seniors), about various grants that are available and how to apply for them. Twelve people attended this session.
For the first time since COVID, we were once again able to hold our Picnic on the Lawn during Railroad Days. Entertainment was provided by Heather and Vaughn with a few guest karaoke singers. We have had a couple fun Trivial Pursuit games, one of which lasted 4 hours. The Wednesday morning group is going strong, and the smear players have been slamming every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. We even had a visit from the crew of the tv show, Old Car Rescue.
We hope to add more regular weekly or monthly activities to our schedule. Watch for the September newsletter for more information on this. Better yet, come out to our General meeting on September 7. Coffee pot will be ready at 10, meeting starts at 11 a.m., followed by pie and ice cream, courtesy of the Women’s Institute.
