A Word from the President - Fall 2019

A few words about 2019

Greatings dear members

The year 2019 brought changes to your Association’s board of directors which went from seven to five members to facilitate its effective functioning. We also welcome Michel as recruit member to the board.

The end of 2019 also marks the end of our Association’s 30th anniversary. It is thanks to people like Lorraine, originator and founding member of our Association, and many other volunteers through the years that we have survived to this day. You also deserve thanks for maintaining your interest in our newsletter Les Robitailleries and having urged members of your family to join our family Association. Like regional newspapers, we struggle with financing and original content while competing with information distributed over the Internet. We would encourage you to subscribe to our electronic bulletin, it helps to cut down our costs.

Since we print out only two paper copies of the Robitailleries every year, we will keep on publishing electronic articles regularly with new contents on various subjects. You can also follow us on Facebook and share pieces of information with your cousins :

https://www.facebook.com/groups/famillesrobitaille/
and
https://www.facebook.com/FamilleRobitaille/

As to myself, I am proud to be a part of our family Association. I commit myself to the continuation of the work already begun and, with the other board members, to the identification of solutions so that our Association meets in the best possible way the needs of its actual and future members. I hope that you will take this opportunity to renew your membership because it is the way to support your Association in its efforts to provide information on our roots and our family values.

To all of you, a happy and healthy New Year!

Marc Robitaille, President

A Word from the President - Spring 2019

Dear members,

After a harsh winter, I'm happy to meet you, parents and friends of the Robitaille family.

Our Association is 30 years old

It is during the weekend of June 8-9 that we invite you to participate in activities to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our Association. We have prepared a program to help you locate your ancestors in places where they have grown, developed and gathered to help build the villages and cities we know today. You will find in this issue all the relevant information for this meeting to which we wish to welcome you in large numbers.

Novelty

Many of you with an email address may have noticed a significant change in the way we communicate with you. Indeed, since the beginning of the year, you receive every month by email a message from us with articles about Robitaille. For members who do not have an email address, we continue to contact you in writing 2-3 times a year. This new way of doing things allows us to communicate with most of you more frequently and we hope you enjoy this new formula.

Membership

In recent years, we have seen a significant decrease in the number of members in good standing of our Association. Your Board of Directors is working hard to try to maintain your interest so that you renew your membership year after year. We also observe a decrease in availability among administrators and commanders due mainly to the disease. Many have been in post for many years and we are looking for a new generation to ensure the sustainability of your Family Association.

I wish you a happy 30th anniversary and look forward to meeting you on June 8th and 9th.

Marc Robitaille, President

A Word from the President - Fall 2018

(Translated by Johanne Boucher, trad. A., Montréal)

 

Dear members,

As this gloriously warm and sunny summer is ending, we welcome the beginning of a new season full of activities. We hope that you will find these activities attractive and that you will take the opportunity they offer to make our Association better known among your friends and relatives.

We held our annual general assembly this past June, but few members attended. While we would hope for greater participation, we are always happy to meet new members. On that day, we had also organized, together with the Tremblay Family Association, a tour of Québec City by bus and it was a very interesting and lively event, though the number of Robitaille participants was small.

For many of you, our newsletter, Les Robitailleries, is the only means we have to keep you informed. Over the recent years, we have developed other communications tools to reach out to Robitaille descendants and their relatives. A team made up of Natalie Bissonnette, Marc, René, Jean and Florent Robitaille met over the summer and prepared a strategic plan to improve the efficiency of our communications.

Natalie and Florent manage our Facebook group which has currently 245 friends

https://www.facebook.com/groups/famillesrobitaille/?ref=bookmarks

as well as a Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/FamilleRobitaille/

If you have not done so already, we invite you to join the group and follow the posts on our page. We also urge you to let other Robitaille family members know about these.

The current members of the Board of directors have been volunteering for a good number of years and some of them have expressed their wish to retire. If you can give a little bit of your time to the Association, please let us know so we could welcome you to the team and get you started gradually.  

Finally, I invite you to let us know what your needs and wishes are, so we can work towards making the Robitaille Family Association more relevant to everyone.

 

Your president for 2018-2019,
Marc Robitaille

A Word from the President - Winter 2018

(Translated by Johanne Boucher, trad. A., Montréal)

Dear members,

Another year is about to end, and it is my pleasure to come to you with this last 2018 message. I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in my name and on behalf of the other members of the Board of directors.

This holiday season allows us time to think back on the year that is ending and to prepare for the coming year. Last June, when we held our summer activity, we realized how difficult it is to attract new members and that lead to changes in our way of managing the association. Therefore, we decided to maximize our use of new communications technologies. We understand some members may not be so enthusiastic about this change, but it really helped the team that writes the newsletter be more efficient.

As we are always looking for ways to foster interest in our association, to maintain our current membership and to attract new members, we are hoping that you will contact us, the Board members, with your ideas and suggestions. We see that social networking tools such as Facebook are very helpful in communicating with Robitaille relatives all over North America and Europe. We wish to continue to feature current Robitaille’s accomplishments as well as historical facts and data. Our Facebook page allows is to reach those of you who live outside Québec and those of you who may not speak French. And to keep the conversation going, we are now providing an English version of the Robitailleries newsletter.

We would like to host events in various regions in order to talk about the association’s goals and provide some genealogical facts on this great family. We would need two or three volunteers to setup a regional event knowing that the Board members are here to help you as well. Please contact us and we will work with you to make this happen. We await your invitation.

The Board members, and I, thank you for your support and hope that we can count on you throughout 2019!

Your president for 2018-2019,
Marc Robitaille

A Word from the President - Fall 2017

(Translated by Johanne Boucher, trad. A., Montréal)

 

Dear members,

The Holiday Season is already upon us and shopkeepers do all they can to attract us. But, this season should be a time for everyone to celebrate with relatives and remember good times spent together without being too nostalgic about it all.

It is when visiting with family members and dear friends that we are reminded of the joy of life. It is also an opportunity to talk about the Robitaille family association and expand your network of relatives throughout America and Europe. Your Association needs to recruit more members and it is often by talking to one another that we can attract new members.

All through this year, we have been communicating with you via the newsletter Les Robitailleries and other information letters which were not published as often as we had hoped. We also have to adapt to new means of reaching our membership and this is why we use Facebook to relay information. To receive our Facebook posts, please join the group called “Association des familles Robitaille” at www.facebook.com/groups/famillesrobitaille/.

We also have started digitizing our old issues of Les Robitailleries and posting them on our website. The first 15 issues are already online and more will be added throughout 2018. Visit www.robitaille.org regularly for updates. Preparing the newsletter for the online platform means we need to take the time to correct spelling errors and other basic info and sometimes modify the photographs. We have found a number of original photographs that are now used to replace the ones previously published in order to have better results.

The members of the Board of directors and the Commanders of the Association wish you all a Happy Holidays.

Peace and Good Health for everyone in 2018!

Your president,
Marc Robitaille

More Articles ...

  1. A Word from the President - Spring 2017
  2. A Word from the President - Fall 2016
  3. A Word from the President - Spring 2016
  4. A Word from the President - Winter 2016