Annual General Meeting – May 4, 2022 @ Georgian Peaks Ski Club

What a night! The BMCC held our Annual General Meeting on May 4, and it was so good to connect with our members and have some fun at the Georgian Peaks Club. Thank you to everyone who joined us for a fabulous evening.

After some mingling, we heard some wonderfully entertaining and informative reports from our Vice-President, Gavin Leitch, and our Treasurer, Glenn Gatcliffe — who knew financial statements and governance reports could be so fun? Then Board member Sean Landreth took the stage to talk about the work the BMCC does, and to invite anyone who is interested in supporting our business community to consider joining the Chamber Board of Directors. (If that includes you, please contact us at to find out more!)

Then we handed things over to our very special guest speaker, Ilana Ben-Ari, Founder, CEO and Lead Toy Designer of Twenty One Toys. There’s no question that she stole the show, and we didn’t mind at all. She talked about her sometimes bumpy journey as an entrepreneur, her involvement with the amazing organization SheEO, and how she took a school design project and turned it into a line of toys now used by more than 1000 schools, universities, companies and organizations in more than 50 countries. And then she let us play with some toys! We really can’t thank her enough for taking the time to speak with us and encouraging us to dream a little bigger. Links to her talk will be available on our website at www.bluemountainschamber.ca soon.

Thank you to the amazing, attentive staff at the Peaks who helped us pull it all off, to the Town of the Blue Mountains for a much-appreciated grant that helped us fund the event, to Helen du Toit from the Blue Mountain Film Festival for sharing some fascinating insights and donating a great raffle prize, and, as ever, to the talented Julie Card at MYCOLLINGWOOD.CA for making us all look so good. (All photos are Julie’s unless otherwise noted. The blurry ones are Kait’s.)