Island Shore Toastmasters - Winnipeg

Father’s Day

The theme of Tuesday’s meeting was Father’s Day, so appropriately the meeting was filled with lots of talk about all our respective fathers. Our Table Topics master was incredibly creative in the process of using the meeting theme, and it led him to come up with incredibly unique questions. The resulting session was a joy to listen to.
Our main speech of the evening was cleverly written, unexpected, and gave us all a demonstration of how to add a dramatic reveal onto the end of a 5-7-minute speech. Well done, Paul.
Despite the number of people attending, it was a quieter, more reflective meeting, but we still enjoyed ourselves and learned a lot, and we would love to see you there when we all meet up again on Tuesday. :)

Highs and Lows and Unusual Twists

While Tuesday’s meeting may have had an unusual twist, thankfully the meeting theme of Highs and Lows wasn’t reflected in the events of our latest meeting. While there was an unusual twist in the format of the meeting, there were no lows to be found, and the meeting on the whole was highly enjoyable. It’s not very often that we have a speaker whose speech project involves conducting a Table Topics session or hear a speech that reminds us that there is real skill involved in being a good mentee to your mentor.

Happily, we also had two guests at our latest meeting. Welcome to Dipen and Victor! We loved welcoming them to our meeting, and we would love to welcome you, so if you would like to be a guest at one of our meetings, please don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected], or through Facebook Messenger.

Travel

Tuesday night’s meeting was based around a something- travel- that most of us have been deprived of for the last year, so it was no surprise that the theme provided a lot of interesting listening, especially during Table Topics. This week’s meeting felt positively loaded with activity. Our two planned speakers ( Gwen and Munim) for the evening each gave speeches that taught us a lot about each of them, and greatly entertained and amused us along the way. A big congratulations to Gwen for giving her very first speech in our club. Bravo!
This week’s meeting was a very enjoyable one, and we would love to see you at our next one. If you are interested in being a guest at one of our meetings please contact us at [email protected] or through Facebook Messenger.

Food and Family
Tuesday night’s meeting had a theme of “Food and Family”, with a focus on food and its connection to family history. Between the stories that were told throughout the meeting, and the fascinating questions and answers we heard during Table Topics, the meeting featured plenty of interesting ideas and stories that made our weekly evening of practising communication skills a very enjoyable one.
( If you would like to be a guest at one of our meetings, we would love to welcome you, so please don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. )

Long Weekends

In honour of the May Long Weekend, our latest meeting was centred entirely around the topic of long weekends. Between the evening's speech about Leadership Styles, the many opinions we shared about long weekends during Table Topics , and stories told throughout the meeting about long weekends past , it ended up being a very enjoyable meeting. We would love to see you there when we learn and enjoy ourselves again at our next meeting. :)

( If you would like to be a guest at one of our meetings, please contact us at [email protected], or through Facebook messenger. )

Camping, Cottaging and Communication Breakdowns

Tuesday night’s meeting theme was “Camping and Cottaging”. Our Toastmaster claimed that it was because he knew from experience that the subject would bring out lots of conflicting opinions among a group of people, and he ended up being right. The theme brought out lots of different opinions on the subject, both in the introductions, and during Table Topics.

If the theme alone didn’t prompt discussion, our prepared speaker for the evening, Paul, delivered a fascinating speech about the communication breakdowns that can happen between fluent non-native, and native speakers of a certain language, to a club( us, Island Shore Toastmasters) that had both native and non-native English speakers present at that same meeting.

Overall, it was a lively meeting with lots of discussion and we enjoyed ourselves a great deal. We would love to have you join us when we do it all again next week. ( If you would like to be a guest at one of our virtual meetings, please contact us either through Facebook Messenger, or by email at [email protected]. )

Mothers

In honour of Mother’s Day, Tuesday night’s meeting was themed was “Mothers”. Between the introductions and Table Topics there was plenty of storytelling, and lots of discussion of mother-child relationships. The prepared speaker of the evening was Yevhen, who gave a speech on the intriguing topic of culture and communication styles.

Overall, the meeting was a great combination of enjoyment and learning, and we would love to see you there when we do it all again next week.

Humour and Healing

Last night’s meeting was themed around the idea that, aside from actual medicines (e.g. insulin, etc..), laughter really is the best (metaphorical) medicine. Appropriately, the meeting was filled with laughter, jokes and funny stories, which provided us all with some much-needed stress relief.
Karen’s planned, theme-inspiring planned speech gave us all a thorough introduction to the world of humour theories and how they have evolved over the centuries. It was an intriguing look into what makes funny jokes funny, and in the process, it proves that, yes, you can explain a joke without destroying its humour. ;)

Success and Recognition

Our latest Tuesday night meeting centred around the theme of success. Incredibly, the main speech of the evening ended being, quite coincidentally, a recognition of the educational successes of our members over the past year. ( What are the odds?)

During the introductions, the question of how to define success led to some very interesting ideas and opinions being shared; however, where the theme really shined was in Table Topics. The questions that our Table Topics Master came up with intriguing and unexpected questions, and the answers they prompted were fascinating as well. It was a delicious buffet of food-for-thought and it was a joy to listen to.
The meeting overall was a lot of fun, and appropriately, quite the success. 😉

Branding and Communication

Between the meeting theme of “Branding” and Kristen’s speech about finding her communication style, last night’s meeting certainly had a very professional feel to it. The theme of branding led to some surprisingly intriguing Table Topics questions and answers.
In addition to the return of last week’s guest Max , we were also fortunate to receive a visit from our Area Director Karl Katipunan. He informed us all of Karen’s last-minute opportunity to replace the Area 53 Table Topics Contest winner in the Division E Table Topics Contest, and of her amazing victory! Congratulations Karen!

Ironic Incidents and Fond Remembrances

Our latest Tuesday night club meeting was a peculiar combination of heartfelt remembrance, genuine amusement, and attempted intellectual discussion ( courtesy of the meeting’s theme, the not-always-easy-to-define concept of irony). The two big highlights of the meeting were the table topics session, with its amusingly strange questions, and especially, Karen’s speech memorializing her recently deceased mother. A quick description of her speech won’t begin to do it justice; however, Karen did such a good job of communicating her emotions that when we listened to it , it felt as though we had already known ( and cared about) her mother for years. That is no easy feat to accomplish in a speech, especially when you’re giving it via zoom.

Finally, while he may have had some technical trouble, we were very happy to welcome our guest Max, and we will be even happier to see him return next week. ( If you would like to be a guest at one of our virtual meetings, please contact us through [email protected], or through Facebook messenger.)

Lies We Tell Ourselves

Tuesday night’s meeting wasn’t quite as serious and downbeat as you’d expect for a meeting themed around “ The Lies we Tell Ourselves”. In fact, what could have turned into our most serious meetings in years, ended up being quite lighthearted, with Paul’s speech about his experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic ending up as the most serious part of the meeting. Then again, when the stories told during the introductions involve the little lies like “I’ll do it later” , or “ It’ll only take 5 minutes to get”, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise that the meeting was more lighthearted. It was still a fairly thoughtful meeting by our standards, but at the same time we still managed to have fun. Overall, it was very enjoyable, and we’d love to see you there at our next meeting. 😊