Monday, January 19, 2009

Gauthier Honored for Service to Cooperatives

The evening of the eighth annual Ontario Co-operative Association Conference and Gala unfolded with the evening banquet revealing this year’s new crop of Spirit Award winners, marking the 10th anniversary for these awards.

GROWMARK Ontario Director of Operations Claude Gauthier, was recognized with the Distinguished Co-operator Spirit Award.

Gauthier began his career as a founding member of the Temiskaming Grain Marketing Co-operative Inc. (Temgrain) and served as a director, president of the board and later was appointed to the position of general manager. Today, Temgrain continues to be an integral and thriving operational arm of Co-opérative Régionale de Nipissing Sudbury.

In his youth, Gauthier participated in the first ever co-ed Co-operative Young Leaders (CYL) program in 1975. In 1985, he was elected as the youngest-ever director of United Co-operatives of Ontario (UCO) and in 1991, was appointed the youngest-ever chairman and president of the UCO Board. Claude is a member of several co-op sector committees and organizations. He is vice president of the Canadian Co-operative Association’s Board of Directors, and has travelled as far as Singapore to spread his passion for co-operatives as a Canadian delegate to the International Co-operative Association’s General Assembly. He is also an active trustee on the board of CDF (Cooperative Development Foundation of Canada), a charitable foundation which raises money to fund many co-operative development projects aimed at alleviating poverty around the world.

Many past award winners were honored during the 10th anniversary celebration and among them that evening were Bill Chamberlain, past general manager of North Wellington Co-operative Services and Denis Bourdeau, president of La Co-operative Agricole d’Embrun, both of whom had a role in presenting the Spirit award to Gauthier.
Bill Chamberlain, 2001 Spirit Award winner (L) and Denis Bourdeau, 2006 Spirit Award recipient (R) present Claude Gauthier with this year’s Distinguished Co-operator Award.


No comments: