With some extra time on your hands in retirement, you’ll be able to enjoy your favourite activities and hobbies. But if you’re looking for more, volunteering for one of the many community clubs and organizations is a great way to give to the community, discover or enjoy new skills and passions, and meet new friends.

(Contact info for most of these opportunities [and others] are located here. For those not listed on that page, we’ve added links.)

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Help out behind the scenes at the Meaford International Film Festival. Volunteer for the Meaford Hall and Culture Foundation and this is just one of the cultural activities you’ll have a chance to play a part in.

Help develop trails, activities and more for the sections of Bruce Trail winding through our area, with the Beaver Valley Bruce Trail Club.

Uncover and help others discover local history at the Meaford Museum.

Design costumes, build sets, or take to the stage with Meaford Community Theatre.

Coach a hockey team or a soccer team or a softball team. (Or start your own club.)

Help bring a wild and wonderful audio and visual experience to the hills of Scotch Mountain at the Electric Eclectics Festival.

Cook up a storm for a community meal and gathering with the monthly Soupor Meal.

Host your own television program on Rogers Cable.

Identify, record and help preserve historical architecture in Meaford with Heritage Meaford, the local branch of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.

Get your hands dirty and grow a beautiful garden by getting involved with Adopt-a-garden/Communities in Bloom.

Help maintain, restore and preserve an historical village church with the Friends of Leith Church.

Enjoy a walk in the park (and get busy promoting and supporting it) with the Friends of Memorial Park.

Help ensure the health of one of our local treasures (and the natural source of Meaford’s founding) with the Bighead River Heritage Association.

Support those in need in the local community with Golden Town Outreach.

Set up fences, supervise events, or man a booth at the Meaford St. Vincent Agricultural Society’s Fall Fair.

If you’re looking for more of a retirement career, stay tuned. We’ll have 10 great post-retirement jobs in Meaford soon.

The Opening Bonspiel has been running all week, and this evening will see the finals of this event. (In fact, this is the third bonspiel in the last couple of weeks – the Meaford Curling Club is an active one.)

Meaford’s Curling Club is almost as old as Meaford itself. Begun in 1876, it’s now in its 135th year. Today, it’s based in a modern facility on Collingwood Street featuring state-of-the-art rinks, and a great group of folks who compete and socialize in equal measure.

As the club points out, curling is a great way to make new friends; it’s as gentle or as strenuous a workout as you want to make it; it’s stimulating both mentally and physically, and social and competitive events make it more than mere exercise.

In addition to the ice, the club features a 1,500 square-foot lounge, bar and kitchen facilities, and a lower-level meeting room.

New members are welcome; visit their website

“I used to meet a few retired men for morning coffee – mostly ex-commuters (to London) with professional or business backgrounds and with a wealth of experience behind them,” wrote Rotarian Fred Carnhill in “A Simple Idea”. “Conversation was always brisk and entertaining. One was an architect, responsible for many public buildings over the country, another an ex-borough treasurer, an ex-railway official, an headmaster, an ex-journalist, an ex-newspaper editor and an ex-secretary to a Prime Minister. This gave me an idea: really a very simple one.”

That night in 1965 he phoned 33 retired friends about joining a club of retired business and professional people.

At the same time, another English Rotarian, Harold Blanchard, established the Caterham PROBUS club – the name, which combined “professional” and “business”, suggested by one of the members. “He assured us that probus was a Latin word from which ‘probity’ was derived,” wrote Blanchard.

Before long the two clubs combined, and today hundreds of thousands of retirees are members of thousands of Probus clubs worldwide.

As probus.org states, “Retirement can come too early for many people who want and are able to remain active.” We agree.

One of the ideas we’d like to hear input on during our virtual focus group exercises is this:

What would you think of having a kind of employment agency for residents, operating out of the Clubhouse, that would match up skills with local needs, so you could keep active and involved with your community and earn a little money now and then?

Perhaps the Business Club of Meaford Haven would offer services to the community at low rates, and both raise money for the club and pay a small amount to the “volunteer”. And the club could offer services to non-profits at no charge.

We’re wondering if ideas along this line appeal to you, and whether it would be an opportunity to do the work for which you’d like to be remembered.

To get involved with the virtual focus groups, sign up.

Heading west along southern Georgian Bay, after the sandy expanse of Wasaga Beach (the largest freshwater beach in the world), the opportunities to throw down a beach towel grow a little more scarce. Then you reach Meaford. Tucked away in a corner of town, you’ll find a true jewel: a narrow drive dips into a leafy forest, past the Memorial Park campground, and then to the hidden sandy stretch of Memorial Park Beach.

Despite its beauty, with vistas of the headland of Cape Rich and the shore curving around Nottasawaga Bay, white sails dipping among the waves, and the rustle of leaves in the lake breeze, you’ll notice a surprising detail. There’s space to lay out your towel. Unlike the more popular party beaches elsewhere, this relatively undiscovered beach is uncrowded and quiet. It’s also tidy, clean and friendly.

Residents recognize the Meaford-owned park as a true asset to the community, and over the years many grassroots groups have helped keep it that way – from the Kin Canada members who helped develop the campground to the Friends of Memorial Park. That group, along with the Meaford Independent, Meaford’s online newspaper, sponsored last weekend’s Earth Day Park Clean-Up. A group of volunteers pitched in to get things ready for the coming summer days, wrapping up their hard work with local organic apple cider donated by Willow Naturals, a new Meaford business.

(Last week marked another significant date in the history of environmentalism. The day before Earth Day was the birthday of John Muir, the famous father of environmentalism in North America. And believe it or not, Meaford held a special place in Muir’s heart. Stay tuned for more soon, and learn how to find the place Muir called a “retired and romantic hollow”. It’s closer than you think.)