The Ottawa River Institute is having its Annual General Meeting on Sunday May 5th in Matawatchan at the home of Audrey and Richard Copeland, 4084 Matawatchan Road.  

The meeting will begin at 11:30 am and will include the launch of the new Nature Notebook website. This website is an awesome resource for getting out and enjoying nature in the Ottawa Valley. It includes information and maps on many special natural areas in Renfrew County; ORI members will be invited to visit many of these areas over the course of the coming year with intrepid adventurers from the ORI Board (John Almstedt, Anne Davies, Ole Hendrickson and Kendra Smith) leading the way.  The usual AGM business will also take place including receipt of the financial statements, project updates, and elections. We will also be adopting new bylaws in order to comply with the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act.

At around 12:30 pm we will take our brown bag lunches (please bring your own) and head out for an excursion to the Griffith Uplands trail. It is approximately 15 minutes by car to the trailhead. Once there we will eat lunch together and then divide into faster and slower groups to check out the loop trail from opposite directions, hopefully meeting somewhere in the middle. This is a very beautiful spot to visit in our watershed with lovely views! There may be wet areas so we suggest you wear boots. The outing should end at around 3 pm. Please join us if you can! 

ORI has openings on the board of directors. If you are interested in serving on the ORI board, please contact Ole Hendrickson, (ole@nrtco.net) or Cheryl Keetch (ckeetch@webhart.net) for more information.

Carpooling can be arranged; please get in touch if you need or would like to offer a ride.