I don’t have much to report since we last met in North Battleford last spring, the past 6 months have been a write off for me. I was unable to travel to Richmond BC for the ACBOA meetings, but fortunately our vice president Chris Gates was able to cover for me and did a fine job of representing the SBOA at those meetings.
It is time to step down and let someone else guide this organization into the future. I think we have some good people who are stepping up to fill new positions on the executive. I look forward to a new executive who can complete the job of bringing new training programs to the SBOA membership. Opportunities for the membership to get training for all three licensing levels with the current National Building Code.
I want to thank everyone on the executive for all the support they have given me for the past eight years and especially the past six months. I am very thankful for the friendships we have developed here at the SBOA. I also want to thank the membership for all of their support for our initiatives we have developed the past few years. Together as a team we worked towards finding ways to bring the membership the training they wanted to support each members needs for certification and licensing. There is still a lot of work to be done but we are getting a lot closer to reaching our goal of having a comprehensive program to cover all three levels.
Some of you are aware that for the past several months I have dealing with throat cancer. I am in the process of recovering from radiation and chemo that I believe successfully eradicated all the cancer cells from me. My message is directed at all of the male members of the SBOA, it is quite common for men to ignore lumps or bumps or small changes in their bodies thinking that they will go away by themselves or they don’t hurt or I don’t want to be a wimp. I found a lump where there shouldn’t have been one and as luck would have it I was able to bring it to my doctor’s attention reasonably quickly due to the timing of my discovery. The other point I would like to make; we will go into denial because we are afraid to find out that it may be something like cancer. Cancer is not the death sentence that it used to be, great strides in treatment have and are still being made, if caught early enough it can be cured. I am not the only survivor in this room I am sure there are a few more here, statistics show that one in every three people will develop cancer during their lives.
Thanks again for your support for the past eight years and I hope you will continue to support the new executive.
Dan Knutson
President, SBOA
