President’s Message

Brampton Tamil Seniors Association was formed at Soccer Centre (presently Sports Max) on October 24, 2013, with five visionaries namely Miss. Gertrude Santhiyapillai, Late Mr. Ram Nagalingam, Mr. Nadarajah Thevarajan, Mr. Sathasivam Vigneswaran and Dr. Kandiah Rathakrishnan(myself). For the first two weeks with Mr. Amleethan Xavier paid our hall rent and there after with Amal’s help, I was able to get hall rent paid off from former Regional Councillor Mr. John Sprovieri’s regional fund allocations. The Brampton City Council passed a resolution to give the hall rent free of charge for the affiliated associations form Monday to Friday from 9 am to 4 pm. Then I approached the former Regional Councillor Mr. John Sprovierie to bear the Gym cost for us to play badminton.  

On the 2nd week we started our membership rose to 11, 3rd week to 16, 4th week to 26 and on 5thweek 33 like wise week by week we had rapid growth in our membership showed how our seniors wanted to mingle to keep away the isolation and loneliness. Because of our rapid membership increase the Soccer centre hall couldn’t accommodate us and we moved to The Gore Meadows Recreation Centre.

Main purpose of forming this association is to alleviate the isolation and loneliness. Adult children go to work and young children and grandchildren go to school and elder seniors find difficult to while away their time.

Our seniors are enthusiastic in attending the meeting at least once a week, make them entertained by participating in activities mingling with their counterparts chatting in many topics, playing games etc.

With the contribution of our members’, we celebrated many activities namely New Year, Canada day, Saraswathy pooja, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Annual celebrations, Christmas.

 In June 2014 we registered our association as a not-for-profit corporation and with the help of Mr. Stan Giri we were able to obtain grants from the Ontario Seniors Community, and New Horizons Seniors Grant. After my term of office for 2 years Mr. David Rajaratnam was elected unanimously as the President in the AGM. He had served as President for the past 6 years. He had introduced many classes for Keyboard, English, Computer and Tablet knitting sewing etc.

On April 25, 2022, I had been re-elected unanimously as the president and new people are elected for the various key posts. We do have an excellent Board of Directors. We are transparent all the board decisions are informed to the members and with their approval we are moving forward. We are ready to listen and solve the problems to the satisfaction of the members.

 

Dr. Rathakrishnan Kandiah