By Martin Sherriff, B.App.Sc., R.T. (MR), 2019 Annual Meeting Program Committee Chair

MontréFall

Bonjour & Hello again…

Fall has begun and the leaves are falling (for those in the northern hemispheres at least). For myself, fall decided to skip us this year with old man winter rolling in with lots of snow… oh yeah…

Fall also marks the time for Harvest festivals, European communities, and for North Americans more commonly known as Thanksgiving, which celebrates the harvest and other blessings of the past year. For Canadians, it was this past weekend, occurring on the second Monday in October which involves gluttonous amounts of turkey and ham. For our southern neighbours Thanksgiving occurs in the fourth Thursday in November.

Fall also marks the opening of registration for the 2019 SMRT Annual Meeting in Montréal. There is a slight change to the format from previous. In Montréal, we will be holding an opening session on Friday afternoon of May 10 from 4pm. Not only is this an opportunity to gain a couple of extra CE credits but it’s also an excellent prelude leading into the Poster Tour and Welcome Reception. The welcome reception is great to meet many old friends from throughout the world but also other attendees that you may have met on Slack prior to the meeting or never before.

Halloween is very popular ‘celebration’ in the fall, also known as All Halloween, All Hallows Eve or All Saints Eve. Halloween is to celebrate remembering the dead including saints, martyrs and the departed. Typically marked by carving jack-o-lanterns and dressing up in scary costumes. For the young at heart do some trick or treating, which basically means collecting copious amounts of lollies, candy and chocolate from your neighbours.

For some people, Halloween is about the scare. Hopefully many of you are busily writing up abstract for submission as the deadline is fast approaching on November 7th. If you need some assistance and help in writing an abstract, please reach out as we, SMRT, are more than happy to help. In Paris, we had just over 70 abstract submissions. I’m sure the abstract committee would love to review as many as you can submit… let’s see if we can get to triple figures for Montréal.

I and the program committee hope that those who have been in the path of Hurricanes (Michael), Typhoons (Trami) and Tsunami (earthquake in Indonesia) have been safe, and that clean up and recovery is fast. Godspeed; I can’t really complain about some frozen precipitation

I and the Program committee look forward to seeing many old and new friends in Montréal.

Merci and Au Revoir

Marty