Jeannette Wilken - President
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Jeannette (Ahrens) Wilken was born and raised in the Hanover area. She graduated from College in 1971 and married her husband John in 1972. They lived and worked in Hanover raising their two daughters and she taught elementary school at James A Magee Community School, retiring in 2004. Jeannette has fulfilled various leadership roles including Literacy Consultant with the BWDSB, member on her church board and is involved with the Patient Family Advisory Committee for HDH. She volunteers her time as a member of the Hospital Auxiliary and Hanover Heights Community School. Jeannette enjoys spending as much quality time as possible with her 3 grandchildren.
Lynda Taylor-Basilij - Past President
Lynda and her husband Bob came to Hanover 33 years ago. They have loved their adopted community ever since. Lynda spend most of her years as an educator with the Bluewater Board of Education, and raising 3 kids. Now released from most deadlines and duties, she is free to enjoy skiing, travel, the family cottage and spending time in her children's homes!
Helen Peppler - First Vice President & Hospitality Co-Chair
Helen grew up in the former Bentinck Township, now part of West Grey on the Hastie family farm settled in 1854. She has just retired from Bruce Power after being on site for 29 years, but prior to that worked in Hanover at New Life Mills and at two Accounting firms.
Retirement is allowing time to work on the family trees, experiment in the kitchen and wood fired oven, read, and spend time with her granddaughters.
Diane McNichol-Byers - Second Vice President
Diane's profile is coming soon.
Jan Stocovaz - Secretary
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and raised in Guelph, Ontario, Jan moved to Hanover to start her teaching career and stayed. Jan loved teaching, primarily physical education, and coaching, particularly volleyball. Retired now, Jan’s three children and grandchildren keep her busy and loving life.
Judy Turnbull - Treasurer
Judy was born and raised in Walkerton. She has two children and is blessed to have six grandchildren between the ages of 15 and 21 years of age. After working for 20 years in the office of Community Care Access Centre, she retired in 2007. Judy's new dachshund puppy, Sophie, is great company and keeps her very active.
In addition to her new appointment as Treasurer, Judy also keeps busy as Secretary at St. Thomas Anglican Church and assists her 92 year old Mother who still lives in her own condo.
Brenda Booth - Membership Chair
Brenda loves to travel and stay active. She can often be seen out walking or at the gym. She most recently participated in the Italy trip with Probus and is hoping that we will soon be able to leave the country again. She sits on the Hanover Public Library Board and is the Treasurer for the local Terry Fox run.
Loretta Dunn - Communications Chair
Loretta Dunn has lived in Grey Bruce since 2010. She took early retirement in 2012 after a 32 year career in marketing and communications, most of those years at head office for The Co-operators in Guelph.
She is semi-retired and works part time as Coordinator of Volunteers with VON Grey Bruce.
Loretta and her husband Dean live near Allan Park and have two daughters and three granddaughters.
Tina Shier - Program Co-Chair
Tina and her husband Jim moved from Toronto to the Hanover area full time in June 2017. Tina’s parents have owned land in the area since the late 1960’s.
She is a retired Registered Nursed having experience in Acute & Outpatient Care and Paediatric Rehabilitation. Over 25 years of her experience was working with children, youth and young adults with physical disabilities.
She believes in giving back to her community by volunteering her time, whether her locally or in Costa Rica. She currently sits on the Hanover and District Hospital Board of Governors.
She enjoys travelling, doing crafts, reading and spending time with family and friends.
Jim Shier - Program Co-Chair
Jim was born and raised in the area east of Lake Simcoe and after attending The Royal Military College, he worked as a professional engineer/engineering manager in the engineering division for a major electric power utility.
After retirement, he and his wife Tina moved to the West Grey area in 2017.
Jim now keeps busy with a variety of activities like reading, woodworking/woodcarving, spending time with family and friends. He enjoys travelling, especially regular trips to Costa Rica.
Sheryl Newton - Activity Chair
Sheryl was fortunate enough to retire early 6 years ago. Her career was in finance from everything from payroll clerk to tax collector. She retired from Homewood Health Centre in Guelph; a very interesting and rewarding job. At that time, she and her husband moved back to Walkerton, where they had lived the 1st eleven years of their marriage. It didn't take much to adjust to small town living after many years away. Last fall, they sold their Walkerton home and moved to Hanover.
Sheryl has a son and a daughter, both married and three beautiful grandchildren. She is filled with great pride to go the grandchildren's hockey games or dance recitals.
Pat Brunner - Hospitality Co-Chair
Pat's profile is coming soon.
Karen Farrow - Greeter Chair
Karen shares three children and five grandchildren with her husband Bob. Five years ago in November Karen and Bob moved to Hanover and are enjoying the camaraderie of many new friends. Previous to that Karen worked for Union Gas for 25 years managing several departments. She also volunteered at Lisaard House (a Cambridge Hospice) and on the CIBC annual 5K run to end Breast Cancer in the Waterloo Region. She also walked in and completed two 60K weekends to end Breast Cancer, one in Calgary and one in Toronto. Travels have taken Karen and Bob to Vancouver, Alaska, France, Canary Islands, Portugal and most recently to Scandinavia.
Craig Brown - Technical Chair
Craig and his wife Louise moved to Hanover shortly after graduating from Univeristy in London. Craig spent most of his working years at the Bruce Nuclear Power site working in Information Technology and rasing 3 kids. Since his retirement in 2019 he is free to spend time camping, traveling, golfing and hiking. Some of these activities have been "influenced" by the pandemic so helping others leverage technology to remain as connected as possible is keeping him out of trouble and off the streets.