RI International Convention 2025

We arrived in Calgary after a nine hour flight and turning our clocks back seven hours.  A recipie for jet lag.  But the next day we walked the three 'blocks' to the convention venue which was huge!  The main events were held in the Saddledome, an ice hockey stadium.  The House of Friendship with over 250 stalls, and the breakout rooms were in the DMC building, which was HUGE! Meaning having to allow plenty of time to find and walk to our selected sessions.

There were different areas in the big conference venue: The Rotary Village, The Peace Park, The Environment Hub and more.  These were centres for various breakout sessions on related topics, but also became meeting places for like minded people. 

The first pre-event day turned out to be really busy with events going on and loads of people around to meet.  The halls where the events took place were enormous and covered a vast area, but with 15,000 attendees from 120 countries, I guess they had to be.  We met lots of (often apologetic) Americans and many Canadians, as you might expect.  There was a show in the evening in th Saddledome, where the Calgary Stampede happens.  It was good to see the Indigenous displays, including dancing and horse races.  The jury is out about the rodeo, although they assumed us that the horses are bred for that.  Yahoo! is the shout out here.  Evidently we were part of one of the biggest White Hat ceremonies, where we pledged allegiance to Calgarian values.  

Sunday was the day of they opening ceremony, which was ok.  The entertainment was mostly cheesy, except David LaMotte, who is a Peace Fellow and an excellent musician. https://www.davidlamotte.com/  

After that there was a pancake breakfast for End Polio.  It was free for a donation to the cause. 

We then took time out to visit the Calgary Tower, which when David visited in the 80s, was the tallest building in Calgary - it's not now!  But it is impressive to take the lift to the 360 viewing platform and glass floor.

We attended lots of workshops, talks and activities.  Met lots of people from many different people and learnt lots. It was a real recharge of the Rotary batteries and an experience to remember!  Something we'd recommend to anyone.