CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE

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Hello all,

Hope you are enjoying the fall weather and colors! Time to look at getting you ponds and fish ready for winter. This time of year, you spend more time in your fish room and see if you want to get new species to raise. There are a number of clubs that will be having auctions Hamilton is on Sept.28 and ours will be on Nov. 09/24 so make a list of things you need. At our meeting on October 7/24, we will be talking about mentoring people who may be interested in sitting as an executive member or on committees. Try it you may like it! I will see you all Oct. 07/24 doors open at 7pm! Also, if you can bring nonperishable food items for the food bank it would be great. Hope to see all who can attend.

Jim Chalmers

President

Hello all,

 As you are probably aware we have a new meeting hall! It is located on Thorold Stone Rd. Niagara Falls and is more than adequate for us. When you turn off Thorold stone Rd into the parking lot you will see a meeting hall on your right It is a stand alone building on the premises. I would like to thank all who offered up suggestions on where to look for a meeting place. The auction was a success and we are steadily getting back to financial stability. Starting in September we will be looking for speakers to come and give their talks on our hobby. This will be our last meeting of the season and elections for office will be held! Looking forward to see all who can attend. Have a great summer!

Jim Chalmers

Interim President

Hello

Hope all is well! The weather is changing and time to fire up your ponds and get them ready for the summer season! The fish are swimming near the top of the pond stretching their fins and looking for food. As you are aware, it’s been a very tumultuous start to the year, but I have every confidence that we will survive as a club and be better than before. As the Interim President, I would like to thank the Executive for working tirelessly to get us back on track and secure our sponsors and friends and let them know we are still here. We will be having an auction on June 2 to raise money and will be looking for lots of help from our members! See you at our meeting April 29.

Thanks

             Jim Chalmers

The beautiful month of June is finally here and with that comes our final meeting of the year. The 2022/2023 club season has been a great one with no interruptions from the pandemic giving us a full year of meetings, auctions and fun.

This club season has brought us many great speakers, the provinces biggest fall auction according to C.A.O.A.C. and hopefully the largest summer auction to come. During this year we have also revamped the website with lots of useful information for members and the public alike at www.scaas.ca. We have finally found a new home for the club at the Columbus Club of Niagara and hopefully we can spend many years at this location in Niagara Falls. I would like to thank Trish and Cindy for all the hard work they did trying to secure this new venue. Without their time and dedication this would not be possible and we would have probably not had a place to hold our meetings, if it weren’t’t for them.

At our final meeting, we will hold our pizza and potluck party as well as our club election to choose the executive committee for the following year by our current club members. We will also be accepting early membership payments for the next club season. Remember that if you renew your membership in June, you will be able to avoid the $5.00 price increase in membership fees that will take place starting September. Senior memberships will not be affected by the price increase and will continue to stay at their current rates.

Canada Day July 1 is just around the corner and is the date that we are holding our summer auction at our new found home, The Columbus Club in Niagara Falls. If you have not already pre-registered as a seller, you may do so by contacting Trish prior to June 25 at SCAASAUCTIONS@GMAIL.COM. By pre-registering this is to solely procure your seller number for the auction, otherwise you may also be able to do so the day of the event if you prefer. At the auction there will be food and drink for sale, as well as raffles and prizes.

With all that in mind, I would like to thank all club members for their participation, as well as the executive committee for all the hard work that they have done this year to keep this club up and running. I hope to see you all in September at our new location. I would also like to wish you all a safe, happy and fun summer.

Jon

It’s official, spring is here and what does that mean, one step closer to getting those ponds up and going as well as all the spring cleanup and maintenance that goes with it. It will then pay off with hours upon hours of relaxation and entertainment that comes with all the hard work that you put in to it now.

This month we have been given some bad news. Due to unforeseen scheduling issues with the Lions Club, we have been forced to leave the big hall that we just acquired and move back into the small room that we have had the majority of our meetings in this year. Unfortunately, this is where we will have to continue our meetings for the remainder of the club season. So, one program we will have to put on hold is the jar shows in order to conserve as much room as possible, to accommodate all members in this small room. There is no need to worry as we have big news on the way for you regarding where our meetings will be held in the future. More information on this will be provided at the meetings.

Remember that June is election month where we will decide collectively who the new executive committee will be for the next year. So, get your nominations in as there are many executive positions as well as committee positions to be filled. If you have any questions about this, please contact Cindy Barrett regarding anything to do with elections whether it be to nominate someone or yourself, she is the one to speak to.

More great news is that we will be having a spring/summer auction coming up at the end of the year. We will be looking for volunteers to help operate and have this auction move smoothly. If you have any children that are looking for high school volunteer hours, we have many spots available for them to complete them. If you have any questions or would like to participate as a volunteer at this upcoming event, please contact Trish our 2nd Vice President as she will get you set up.

We are still looking for members who would like to contribute to our newsletter whether it be photos of your fish/tanks or an article about your fish room or even about a breeding project that you have been working on. Please don’t hesitate to contact Pat Shriner to get your article into our newsletter.

Please note that if you wish to contact any of us on the executive team links to our emails and such are on the club website www.scaas.ca in the contact’s section.

I hope everybody has a wonderful beginning of spring and I can’t wait to see you all at our next meeting Easter Monday, April 10 at 7 PM where Anes Hotic from Zoo Med will be presenting “How to build a paludarium”. Don’t forget we will be hosting the meeting in our original room at the Lions centre.

Jon

Happy February everyone. As ponds are frozen over I hope everyone is staying warm and keeping busy in your fish rooms as we enter the coldest months of the year. Me personally, I am not a fan of the cold so I have been hibernating and getting some early spring cleaning and deep maintenance done to my house and aquariums. 

As for our upcoming meeting Monday February 13th, we would like to welcome Brian Glazier from Burlington Ontario. Brian’s presentation “THE FASCINATING WORLD OF SWORDFISH”, will be an in-depth view into the world of swordfish keeping, breeding and husbandry. 

Our February meeting will also be the re-commencement of our monthly jar show competition. This months FISH OF THE MONTH will be Sharks and Loaches. Other categories such as Adult Open And Junior Opens are available as well to compete i. If you don’t have a fish of the month entry and still want to participate with whatever fish you choose. Prizes of 1st, 2nd & 3rd will be available to be won in each category as well as a best in show between all categories. 

Members don’t forget last month we started to operate our canteen again offering pop, coffee, tea and other miscellaneous items. So we ask you skip that trip to Tim Hortons prior to the meeting and support you club instead. Remember that 100% OF PROCEEDS made from the canteen go right back into the club to help with funding different programs and events. The canteen this month will be doing a giveaway for an Aquatic Calendar. So for every purchase you make at our canteen this month you can fill out a ballot to try to win the calendar. Good luck.

I would also like to stress that Pat Shriner our SCAT editor is in dire need of article and photo submissions for the newsletter. Prior to the pandemic our newsletter was filled with submissions from many members. Photos of your tanks, specific fish or even a tour of your fish room would be great. Even better write a small article accompanying your photos explaining what’s in them. Any contributions would be wonderful. So if you want to show something off or just have something your proud of, take a picture or document your process and or progress of your project and send it to pshriner17@gmail.com .

Another option for members who decide they want to show off your different projects why not put in your applications for BAP or HAP. You get the chance to earn points for breeding or horticulture. For more information please contact Tom & Pat Bridges to submit your application for the Breeders Award Program and contact Andrew Frück to submit applications for The Horticultural Awards Program.

I can’t wait to see you all and your jar show submissions and hopefully we can have a fun competition that hasn’t been done in many years.

Jon

Can you believe it’s December already, time for warm clothes warm drinks and keeping the house at a balmy 78F to keep them tanks warm. We’ve had a great 2022 so far and been able to finally operate the club as normal with no more lockdowns or restrictions. That being said I hope everyone continues to stay safe, happy and are able to enjoy our up coming events. 

I would like to thank everyone for coming out last month for our November meeting and enjoying our presentation by Peter DeSouza as he told us about his “Collecting Adventures in Cameroon”. It’s was a very informative presentation with great footage, pictures and a lot of great information on many of the native fish, local wildlife and style of life in the African Country. I would look forward to having him again as a speaker sometime in the future. 

I would also like to congratulate all executive members on the election we had as well. Many of the old executive members have stayed on to keep this club awesome and moving forward into the rest of the 2022/2023 club season. Your new executive committee is as follows; President JON MATTATALL, 1ST Vice President TOM HILLIER, 2ND Vice President TRISH FRÜCK, Secretary PHIL BARRETT and Treasurer ANDREW FRÜCK. 

I would especially like to thank Pat Shriner our past president who has just stepped down this year. He has kept this club going strong since 2017. Pat may have stepped down as president but his dedication to the club hasn’t stopped. He has agreed to continue on as our Scat author/editor as well as continuing to be the Jar Show coordinator and Judge once we get the monthly show back up and going. 

As your new president I will work with our executive members and our other committee members to get this club back up and running since COVID-19 knocked us down with all the restrictions and lockdowns. Now that our club has settled in to our new home at the Grantham Lions Club things should start to get back to normal. Our membership count is on the rise and getting speakers for presentations and workshops are becoming more readily available. One item I would like to see back up and going is the jar shows. Hopefully with membership on the rise and more members willing to participate we may see a come back to the program. 

I can’t wait to see you all at our December meeting as it will be my first as your new president. December’s meeting will be our annual potluck Christmas party with delicious items brought in by members as well as the club providing pizza and drinks. Gifts will be provided to paid members who signed up for the Christmas party at November’s meetIng. So if you didn’t get to sign up or wasn’t at the last meeting please contact Trish to let her know you are coming to the December party. If you choose to bring a dish of some sort please contact Trish as well to let her know what your bringing as to avoid people bringing the same thing. 

 With all this said I would like to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Fishmas and a prosperous New Year.

Welcome,

It’s been awhile, based on the expected temperatures next week, winter is coming! I hope your aquariums and fish rooms are still doing well. I know my pond has been put to rest for the winter.  

It was a great turnout for our annual club auction which was held on October 30, 2022. We had close to 700 items up for auction and over 50 sellers, both local and from other clubs in the GTA and beyond (Barrie!). Thiswas a major fundraiser for the club which will help to continue to pay for hall rentals, speakers, and other club functions throughout the year. Just would like to thank those club members who helped out with the hostingthis big event (largest auction in Ontario in 2022) and volunteered their time during the day to make it a success. We also received support from members of other clubs to make the auction run smoothly throughout the day.

Our November meeting will feature Peter Desouza, and he will talk about collecting adventures in Cameroon.  We will also have our usual member door prize draw; raffle draws and our monthly auction.  Due to the pandemic, we have not had club elections since 2019, so we are going to have elections for the

executive during our November meeting. All positions are open, see ad in the SCAT for further details.

Our retail sponsors, included in this SCAT will be extending discounts to those with new 2022 memberships. Please try to support our sponsors.

Also, please email your photos and aquarium related articles for inclusion into future editions of the SCAT. Thank you for the photos and articles that some of our members have provided in the past. It would be greatly appreciated. Also, members can put in aquarium related wanted and sale ads in the SCAT. Just email me to put your ad in the next SCAT.

If you are breeding fish and would like to receive recognition for doing so, please complete the breeders form and e-mail to Tom Bridges.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for future club meetings or events, please feel free to contact any members of the executive. We hope that you and your families are keeping well and hope to see you at our next

meeting.

Pat

Our next meeting is Monday, January 6, 2020 at 7:30 PM at our new meeting location, Holy Rosary Hall located at 35 Queen Street South in Thorold. I can’t believe that 2020 is only days away as I prepare this message. Our December annual Christmas potluck went well. There was over 45 people in attendance on a wintry day. Thanks to all our members that brought some items to our potluck. We had our members draw with some aquarium related prizes up for grabs. Clyde Beam won the ZooMed canister filter draw. We will start another draw at the January meeting for another ZooMed Canister filter. Once the 40 tickets are sold we will do the draw. Also, during this meeting our club made a donation of $400 to Community Care (through our auction and raffle proceeds and our annual donation).

For our January meeting we will welcome Jeff Mountjoy from NorthFin Inc. His presentation is titled “Feeding Fish - Food for Thought”. I look forward to this presentation as what we feed our fish is one of the most important factors in fishkeeping. NorthFin Inc. have always been a big supporter of our club and they some of the best fish foods in the hobby. Asalways,we will have our auction, raffle and jar show at this meeting.

Also, I wanted to thank Megan Beam for her time as editor of the Scat. This postion is currently open so if you are interested in taking it on, please talk to any member of our exective.

Happy New Year and we hope to see you at our new hall on January 6, 2020.

Pat

Welcome to you all!

It was a great turnout for our October meeting. It was good to see a few new members and guests. I hope you enjoyed the Running a Fish Store presentation by Mike Majer. I found it very informative on just how much work and effort go into running that type of business.

Our November meeting will feature Oscar Virgilio, and he will talk about fresh- water stingrays. I have always considered getting one of these animals. We will begin the meeting at 7:30 PM sharp so please try to make it to the hall a few minutes early. We will have our usual member door prize draws, raffle draws and our auction.

Prior to our meeting our annual auction will take place on Sunday November 3, 2019 at our regular meeting hall. This is our main fund raiser that supports the club throughout the year. The hall will open at 8 AM and the auction will begin at 10 AM sharp. It’s a great chance to sell your fish, plants and other aquarium relat- ed items. Also, an opportunity to purchase fish and plants that you may not see in local pet stores as well. We are always looking for volunteers for that day whether it be for the day or part of the day, that would be helpful to the club.

Auction rules and forms can be found on our website.

So please get the word out about our auction as well as our club meetings.

I hope to see you at our auction on Sunday November 3 and our club meeting the following day on Monday November 4.

Thank you