Due to various reasons, including the weather, our numbers on both Monday and Thursday nights have been down. However, they now seem to be on the upswing again. For those who worry about parking at Gower Street Church, there is always space across the road on the east side of the Church, as well as lower down near the Cathedral. There is also space in the lower parking lot of St. Andrews Kirk, off Queens Road.
BURNS SUPPER. The Demo. Team were well received when performing before a large crowd at the Burns Supper. The new white dresses, along with Nfld. tartan sashes, looked good. Thank you Karen for supplying the fringes and for making the sashes out of material donated by Noreen. Noreen takes and keeps photos of all the events our group is involved in, including Glenbrook Lodge. If you would like to see her collection, just ask. She is our archivist.
GLENBROOK LODGE. Quite a few dancers turned out to help the residents celebrate Burns Night, including a group of children from St. Andrew's School, whom Penny Gillies has been teaching. They joined us in dancing and also performed on their own. They were very good and everyone enjoyed watching them.
The haggis, made by Jennifer Whitfield and donated by the St. Andrew's Society was carried by one of the schoolchildren and piped in by David Allison. Stewart Gillies gave a short address.
SOCIAL.Numbers were down at the social on Feb. 24th but everyone had a good time, in spite of being tired from shovelling snow. The usual good food was available afterwards. The next one is our Basic social on March 24 with the band and we hope all our basic class will attend, along with our social class dancers.
The NOMINATING COMMITTEE, consisting of Robert MacIsaac, Noreen MacLennan and Joan MacNeil, will be looking for volunteers to serve on the Executive next year. If you can give a small amount of your time, please consider it.
WORKSHOPS. Details have been worked out for our two upcoming workshops:
May 26 with Duncan Keppie. There will be two classes in the morning and one in the afternoon at either Vanier or Gower. There will be a party in the evening at the home of Sue and Bill Scott.
August 3-5 with Mel Briscoe. Plans are going ahead. There will be a basic class on the Friday night, followed by a party at Sue and Bill's house. On Saturday morning there will be two classes and one in the afternoon. There may also be a preparation class in the afternoon for the evening social at Vanier School. Sunday morning there will be an English Country Dance class given by one of our teachers, followed by a pancake brunch at Brenda Burness' house in St. Philips.
We will be looking for billets for out-of-province dancers, so if you have a spare room and are willing, we would be very grateful.
Our own teachers periodically go to teach at workshops. Bill and Sue have just returned from teaching at one in Ottawa.
The following article was written by Guy Quesnel, a member of the Ardbrae Dancers of Ottawa. If anyone is thinking of buying clothing etc. this may be very useful to them.
HOW TO LEGALLY AVOID DUTIES ON SCD-RELATED CLOTHING
Membership does have its privileges
Recently I had purchased a new kilt jacket directly from Scotland. The Canada Customs & Revenue Agency (CCRA) had informed me that the duty on imported wool clothing was 21%. Combined with the 15% GST+PST, the overall tax would have been 39% (1.21 x 1.15 = 1.39). Ouch! One would have needed to drink a fair amount of scotch to dull that pain. Although not an unpleasant prospect, I was nevertheless motivated to do a bit of research.
The CCRA has its own website and, with some navigation, I found the Table of Contents for the complete Customs Tariff schedule at:
http://www.ccra-adrc.gc.ca/customs/general/publications/customs_tariff_toc2000-e.html
The document is formidable. In small-type double-sided hardcopy form, it is about five inches thick. The document as a whole is not electronically searchable and it is best to have a high-speed Internet connection for reasonably quick downloads of the individual chapters. As luck would have it, the key entry is found in the very last chapter: Section XXI, chapter 99, "Special classification provisions - commercial." Buried in this is the following:
9937.00.00 Costumes, and parts and accessories thereof, designed or decorated in a matter reflecting a specific ethno-cultural heritage when for the use of an ethno-cultural group that requires the costumes for the public manifestation of its heritage...
The Minister of National Revenue shall have regard for the following criteria in deciding whether to recognize a group as an ethno-cultural group:
(i) Whether the group consists of at least 5 persons each of whom is at least 18 years of age and is a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident...
(ii) Whether the group is a voluntary, non-profit group constituted for the purpose of preserving its ethno-cultural heritage and sharing that heritage with Canadians.
(iii) Whether the group is supported by, and is a representative of, the ethnic community to which is belongs.
Scottish country dancing definitely fits the introductory description. Also, being a member of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society (RSCDS), I was able to satisfy all three qualifications.
At the Ottawa airport customs control office, I was met by a pleasant but incredulous officer. However, following a discussion with his advisor, he gave me the duty for this provision - zero percent! The RSCDS affiliation most definitely had to be emphasized on the customs declaration form in order to satisfy the "commercial" nature of this provision.
The overall savings was 24% - about five years worth of my voluntary membership in the RSCDS, which is in addition to our Ardbrae membership. Happy day! I had that scotch anyhow. -- Guy Quesnel
If anyone has any views, comments, suggestions, or finds an article, joke etc. which would be suitable for the newsletter, would you please let Brenda know. We're always looking for new material.