The Lions Club Of Land O’ Lakes Roar

Robert Frost describing the changes in the cycles of nature, and ultimately in the cycle of life, refers to the inevitable end of everything. He says: "Nothing gold can stay". I can’t not think of that as I am writing this Roar.

In the past few weeks our community of Land O’ Lakes and the Lions Community at large lost a lot of gold; Margret Axford, Reeve Henry Hogg, PDG Bill Zwier. There has also been loss in our extended personal family and that too is gold.

R. Frost says “Nature’s first green is gold”; those moments that we celebrate the first bits of spring; the moments we hear a newborn’s little screech gasping for air for the first time; those are the moments we long to be part of in life. It is also in the moments that a new project starts, or a good deed is created that we are once again at the face of a “first green”. The people that we have lost were the creators and advancers of that first green in so many ways.

And while it does feel that the first green lasts “only so an hour”, the accomplishments of the people we lost will last forever in our minds. Every time that we walk into the Cloyne and District Pioneer Museum, or drive by the Township of Addington Highlands, or visit the Facebook pages of Sharbot Lake Lions Club, we will see them and remember them.

Our leaves in Land O’ Lakes are turning yellow and red. Our trees are losing their leaves and showing their bare branches; but we know, just as Robert Frost knew, that the tree always remembers her leaves, always remembers her first greens, always holds dear her gold. And so will we remember them all.

There are now, on the poles of Highway 41, banners of the young people who served this country. Those too were gold.

Till we meet again in a Roar, look at the leaves as they fall from the tree, think of the cycle of life and remember that “leaf subsides to leaf”, and we remember too. Lest We Forget.