Member Profile: Introducing your Chapter Head

In an effort for all our distant members across the country to get to know one another, we'll be beginning a series of posts of Member Profiles. This will let members put some names to faces in their immediate local area as well as give a chance for folks to share our mutual passion for wooden canoes with each other.  Many of you know Alex Guthro from Hamilton through the chapter communications sent out by email. Here is Alex's message to the group:

Hi. I’m Alex Guthro, the current Head of the Northern Lakes / Canada Chapter. I’ve been a member of the WCHA since 2006 and stepped into the Chapter head role in 2018. I’d like to formally welcome you to our new Northern Lakes Chapter website. A fellow WCHA member, Murat Vardar, has volunteered to create and maintain the site for our group.

We hope the site will be a means for members to;

• Keep up-to-date on future Chapter events
• Announce and arrange paddling meetups with fellow chapter members in your vicinity  
• Assist each other with their knowledge on repairs, restorations and wooden canoe history
• Submit suggestions for canoe-related activities for both paddling and non-paddling seasons
• Participate in event programming to showcase skills of our membership
• Share their interest of wooden canoes with the whole Chapter membership
• Promote the Northern Lakes Chapter to the public and ideally grow the chapter by recruiting new members for our parent organisation, the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association 

We’d appreciate your feedback and suggestions regarding this site and encourage you to submit stories, updates, and photos of current and past projects.

Currently we do not have a formal structure for the Chapter but that could change with enough interest. Most activities such as this website are done in collaboration with members who commonly keep in touch with each other, it would be great to expand that to include more of you.