As Chair of the Host Organizing Committee, this is my invitation to all of you to join us for the celebration of the internationality of Rotary in Montreal, June 20 – 23, 2010. We will be celebrating 100 years of Rotary being an international organization as a result of the first Rotary club meeting outside the USA in November, 1910, in Winnipeg, Canada. You will live ‘An International Experience’ everywhere you go within the city.

This is your celebration of 100 years of diverse cultures, multiple languages, and numerous races and religions all working together in harmony to make a better world in Rotary. You will also experience this diversity in the city of Montreal. Montreal is officially a bilingual city where French and English is spoken everywhere, but there are 80 different languages spoken throughout the neighbourhoods representing the many countries our citizens have come from.

You will experience the multi-ethnicity of Rotary in the streets, and the friendliness of the locals in the shops, in the restaurants, in the museums, or traveling on the Metro (subway), or perhaps while just relaxing, enjoying refreshment in an outdoor café or sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree in one of many Montreal’s parks.