GK Message, Sept 2025

Welcome brother Knights to the 2025/26 Columbian year.

It’s always a little exciting to look forward and think about what we want to try, and the things that we need to plan. Not everything sees the light of day, but honestly so much already has. One of the greatest ways to view the tasks ahead is not to see it as a wide open blank cheque of time, but rather to recognize it as a countdown. We have 300 days left in this year. What are we able to fit into that amount of time and when? Tomorrow we have 299 days left. Did we use that time wisely or could we have done more? After Remembrance Day there will be 230 days left. 70 have passed by at that point. What did we use them for? What are we going to use the rest of them for? For my first newsletter message this year, I want to share with you a little snapshot of the ideas and challenges, as well as the projects for the coming year as we try to piece it all together and maybe you can all help capitalize on the remaining days. As members you are all invited to take on any activity or even champion one that isn’t listed. The more help the better. 

• www.leduckc.ca
  Our council website is up and running. It’s hosting a ton of information and communication. While it isn’t completely finished yet, it gets bigger and better every day. If anyone has the time and wherewithal to participate in editing, building or updating it, just let me know. There is plenty of work to go around to get it all tuned up and ripe with information.
  • Event updates, program schedules and message posts
  • Fr. Mathew’s homilies after each weekend set of masses
  • Good of the Order for prayers
  • Calendar dates for the council, church and our greater Catholic community
  • Birthdays, anniversaries and memorial dates, also to remember in your prayers 
  • KC history
  • 4th degree and Columbus Club info (upcoming)
  • Council Programs and efforts
  • YouTube links
  • Membership info
  • Clothing by Matt (upcoming)
  • Photos and social media links (upcoming)
  • Memorial photos (upcoming)
  • News alerts and updates by subscription (upcoming)

You can find a ton of info on our site and it’s still in its fledgling state. I post as much as I possibly can and try to keep it as up to date as possible. Share the website with anyone who might want to know about the Knights, Leduc Council, or any of the programs we are working on.

• Communications
  We want to make a better effort to communicate info to the members, but we are going to start trying to communicate what we are doing, what we sponsor, what we support, to the greater parish community. So many people have no idea there is more to the Knights than pancake breakfasts and bingos. We are going to encourage program leaders to find ways to promote and display the good works that we are doing in whatever way we can. That includes our email fan out, newsletter, website, message boards, church bulletin, the parish Flocknotes tool, and word of mouth as much as possible.
  
• Membership Dues
  Thanks to the efforts of our worthy Financial Secretary and the willingness and ability of the majority of our membership, we are as close as possible to having 100% of membership dues up to date. In fact we are at 85%. That may sound like a simple thing to be thankful for, but honestly it’s quite monumental and not typical. Thank you to all of you who have kept their dues current and for those of you who are just behind, please try to catch up. The new year dues will come to effect January 1, 2026, so now is the time to catch up so we are ahead for next year. Contact Richard Yoner at fs7061@kofc.ab.ca to pay your membership up.
  
• Membership Drive – Or Lack Thereof
  You may know this about me or you may not. I hate membership drives. I don’t like the logic of them the way they are structured. The idea of framing a situation where the Knights are highlighted and creating an easy path to signing up, is not bad in itself. My issue lies squarely on what happens next. We lose many good men and families to a lack of ability to bond or connect. For me this means that a membership drive puts the cart before the horse. The framework becomes “Join us and find out” instead of “We are busy doing great things that you can see, so if you like that and want to be part of it, then come and join us”. In short, I would much rather have people want to join us because we represent something worth being part of, than just randomly getting anyone with a pen to sign up. I feel like that provides us a much stronger and more involved group of men. I don’t know if anyone else feels that way about it entirely, but I wanted to share it with you so that you all know why we aren’t necessarily following the standard game plan from the Knights of Columbus at State and Supreme. Having said that, should anyone feel strongly enough to lead a membership drive, I would certainly support that effort.
  
• New Field Agent – Erjon Osmenaj
  Louis Rouleau has finally had someone take over some of his portfolio since he has become a vice chair of the agency in Alberta. Congratulations Louis.  We have a new field agent now. From the sounds of it he has been making contact with members of the council already, to introduce himself and review the status of our coverage. I have not yet met him but have extended an invitation to come out to a general meeting this year. When we have it scheduled, I’ll let you all know when he is coming. Hey – maybe I’ll post it to the website for everyone.
  
• KC Floor Hockey
  Our council has been quietly sponsoring a floor hockey league in town for about 20 years. It runs on Thursday nights from Sept – May each year at Christ the King High School gym. It’s a pick up hockey league, meaning games are played each night based on who attends and teams are picked each game. Cost is $100 a season. Bring a white shirt, dark shirt, clean gym shoes and a league approved hockey stick. It’s not just Knights or men from the parish that play. Guys come from all over to play. We will soon host a website for the league, once we have time to build it. In the meantime, the contact info for one of the league admins is posted on our council website home page. It is a lot of fun. And a lot of hurting the following days.
  
• Faith Formation
  We will continue our focus on building faith formation programs up. The theory is that if it wasn’t for our faith in common, binding us together as actual brothers in Christ, then we might as well be members of the Elks or Lions or Rotary Club. We would be just another service club. Be we aren’t. We are Catholic Christians. It’s not a secret that we could do a better job of supporting and building our faith. So that’s what we will do. Here is a list of Faith Formation work that we have established and will continue to build from for our community.
  • Monthly Formation Message – from our State Chaplain. We share the monthly message in the newsletter and we should try to review what he is saying to us to try and understand it, and apply it to our lives as Knights. It will also be on the website soon.
  • Monthly Challenge from Supreme Chaplain – The Supreme Chaplain issues a challenge each month to all members. We will start linking those and highlighting them.
  • Fr. Mathew Homilies – Fr. Mathew has been gracious enough to share his homily with us to post on our website after the weekend ends. If you happen to miss something he said, or want to review it again, or maybe if you miss mass entirely, you can catch up by reading his homily. They are always great.
  • Men’s Mass – We want to try and pick a weekend this year where we have men of the parish take on all of the supporting ministry roles for each mass of the weekend. Saturday and both Sunday masses if possible. That would mean having men fill the roles of Ushers, Readers, Commentator, Eucharistic Ministers, Adult Server, possibly all altar servers, and if we are lucky enough, even music ministry. The intent is to show the men’s support of the parish and our pastor in a very visible way. While we don’t have a date set yet, we need to try and get more men trained and ready for the various roles. Ireland Kowal has offered to provide a specific training session for us to get as many men ready to take part as possible. If you already are able to take on some of these ministries, or maybe you have always wanted to try one, now is the time to speak up and get involved. We will open this to the men of the parish and not make it just a KC event. 
  • January 3000 Rosary Challenge – We will once again do the challenge for Rosaries to be prayed in the month of January, with the goal of documenting at least 3000 prayed. During January we will put out other Rosary related messages, videos, and challenges to help encourage more prayer.
  • Finding the Holy Spirit – This is a men’s bible study discussion group. We don’t follow a specific program. It’s just reading verses and discussing how the Holy Spirit wants to act in our lives. We meet in the KC room on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month at 7pm. This is open to all men and has no requirement other than try to bring a bible and a highlighter. 
  • Shameless Catholicism – This is a study program based on various learning programs offered by Ascension Press. It’s open to anyone who wants to know more about our rich and vibrant faith. We meet on the 3rd Friday of each month in the KC room.
  • Revive – A young adults group intending to build a community of young people (18-30 yrs) while exploring a study of our faith, as well as bonding events away from the parish. They meet at least once a month in the church basement on the 2nd Friday of each month at 7pm. 
  • COR – this is a faith building program through the Knights of Columbus. It’s well documented on the Supreme website. There is a strong push to start up a COR program in each parish council. If anyone wants to read the material and take this on then just say the word. 
  • ProLife Programs – Honestly anything we can do to promote the theology of the value and sanctity of life, the better. When we put a dollar value on a life, it becomes something we can justify doing anything to. You can weigh if a life is ‘worth’ your sacrifice, money or time. However, if life is a priceless gift from God, then we must do anything we can to protect and support it. It matters. Get out and support the ProLife leaders we have in our church and community. We are blessed with some amazing champions right in our own parish. Thank you Michelle and Bruce Lamer.
  • Prayer Intentions –
    • If you cannot make it to a meeting, then at least say a prayer for those who are at the meeting. We drafted a version of the council prayer for those who cannot attend, so they can offer prayers in support of the work and men at the council in their absence. 
    • We also would ask that you check the Good of the Order postings on the website to see who we are offering prayers for in their time of need. 
    • And finally, the reason we post all of the birthdays, anniversaries and memorial dates on the website home page, is so that we can keep all of those people in our prayers as well. The display shows anything in the calendar over the next 30 days.
      
• Community Programs
  Another push we try to work on is building our communities up. The old ways have faded away behind the computer screens and blue lights of our modern world. That is to say that the connections we make are easier, but far more meaningless and remote than they used to be. We don’t see community dances, dinners, or other things that used to gather us together to talk and share. At least we don’t normally see them anymore. And as a result we seem to be more withdrawn from our neighbours. Our lives become more polarized and confrontational. Our value has been reduced to what can claim our attention the most. We have become commodities to claim for faceless corporate and political interests. If you ever hear “for the greater good” run and hide. Nothing good, Godly or wholesome tends to follow that.
  
  I believe the real strength of society is in the imperfection of the individual, but only when it’s connected to other imperfect individuals in the communion of a functional supporting community. So every little thing we can do to create opportunity to build that, has tremendous impact and leaves ripples that never stop moving. Pretty heavy talk right? But I think we can all see the truth behind how important having each other and loving our neighbour is. Especially since the lockdowns. Talk to any young person between the age of 15-25 and you will very quickly learn just how deep those scars and missing pieces of a normal life run. Don’t take for granted what we all used to have. Knock down the walls to find ways to bring some of it back to life for our next generations. Here are some of the small steps we want to take or are already taking.
  
  • Troy’s Game Night – Troy Yoner is hosting a games night on the first Friday of each month in the church basement. This will start up on Oct 3. Keep your eyes open for the announcements and what games will be hosted each month. 
  • St. Michael’s Feast – This isn’t a Knights program but we do what we can to help and support it because it has tremendous value as a community event for the parish. Also, just come out and share a meal with your neighbours. Meet some new folks. Explore the stories of those who stand by us each weekend mass. It matters.
  • Pancake Breakfasts – We don’t run these each month to raise money. In most cases we barely brake even if we are lucky. We have a strong commitment to running these for the parish due to the community building value it has. It also has the effect of providing a project where our men can work together and build friendships and bonds along the way. Men are funny that way. Put a task in front of them and they will hammer it down one way or another, but they always find ways to connect while doing that. 
  • Wheelchair Program – Brother George Cygan has been working on this program for about 10 years now. We learned at our executive meeting that over that block of time, George has collected and donated almost $10,000 of aluminum and metal to be converted into wheelchair purchases for donation to those in need. And having said that, he still runs into so many people who don’t know about the program or what we do with it. We really do need to get more promotion out there about what we have going on. Great work on the program George and thank you.
  • Free Throw Competition – This is a regular program that we put on for youth to compete in with a chance to move up to the next levels to compete for eventually the provincial or State level championship. We are working out plans and dates still for this year. 
  • Coats for Kids – Brother Troy Yoner is administrating our coats for kids program again this year. While that program is a well established one in the Knights, we have not done it for a number of years. Thank you Troy for resurrecting it and getting it out to those in need.  
  • Widows Lawn Maintenance – Brother Troy Yonder leads this program for us. We gather a work bee together and help out those who need support in our community by doing Spring treatment of lawns. 
  • Knight to Know You – We are looking to build a program that gets some of the new members together with some of our legacy members in a small intimate setting to just share stories and learn about each other. I’ve often said that sometimes you really meet someone for the first time at their funeral. Sometimes that’s literal, sometimes it’s metaphorical. But either way, what it means is that we often don’t take the time to really learn about someone until they are gone. That is a tragedy of life of course. But it’s not insurmountable. We simply need to pay attention and find our opportunities. One of our new brothers, Renz Tolentini, has expressed an interest in helping us get this program up and running. Along with some amazing ideas for it, including the cool name. Hope to see this roll out soon.
  • Brother Knights – One of the other efforts in conjunction with the Knight to Know You program, would be to create new friendships and bonds. If we can promote further and sustained bonding between any members or even non-members, that would go a long way to reducing some of the loneliness that creeps its way into our lives as we age and our circle shrinks and changes. 
  • Knight of the Month – One of the side projects of the Knight to Know You program is to find a way to somehow spotlight members, not because of what they have done lately for the parish or council, but rather simply because they are our brothers and maybe we can share some of the stories of our brothers by recognizing them and their histories. We may retrofit the normal Knight of the Month program or just create a parallel one for this. For right now it’s still just a concept idea.
  • Parish Family of the Month – Brother Andy Hawboldt came up with a great concept here. His idea was to recognize a parish family of the month and have them introduced at the end of a mass. We could create a certificate to hand over to them and offer them a free pancake breakfast. We would want to get the parish office involved in the selection process. If anyone else has any other thoughts on how to run this program we could use any thoughts that come.
  • Memorial Mass – We have a memorial mass in November each year where we remember all of those members and spouses who have gone before us. Watch the website for the date once it is chosen and posted. 
  • Christmas Dinner – We host a council Christmas dinner each year. This year it will be on Saturday, December 6. Watch for more information as it draws near.

So as you can see, there is a tremendous amount to be excited about. But it takes crews of people. So my request for you as members is the same as always. Please try to find at least one thing that you help with. If you are unable to, I understand. Some of us have put a lot of miles on our Knights of Columbus feet already and don’t have a lot left to give. Or possibly you just work a schedule that doesn’t allow you much time to put your fingerprints on other things. But if you can find even just one thing that you can take part in for the year, that is one more success for the parish in general. And you potentially start a journey towards doing two things. Then three. And before you know it, you are meeting people, getting out and having an impact, while letting others have an impact on you. So crazy it just might work. But only if you are willing to take the first step.

For those of you who made it to the end of this message, thank you. I know it’s a grind. But hopefully it’s been worth it. 

Here is to having a great Columbian year this year. Chris Carr – Grand Knight, Fr. Leduc Council 7061