February Meeting, 2019

This year we met in Dearborn, Michigan, for our annual general meeting.

We were graciously hosted by David and Melissa Ferrell, who found an excellent venue and generously opened their home to us.

We had many excellent seminars, and look forward to using the venue again in 3 years, after Toronto and Ottawa host again. In future, meetings will take place in March rather than February.

To begin the meeting we had a discussion led by Christian Cameron on building an impression works and our approach to reenacting the period.

Then the general meeting began.

We discussed the events of last year, which included,

The Spring vigil

The June deed

Walking the Camino in Spain

The Tourneo del Signo Bianco.

Deed of alms and the Maskerade.

Trek

Bolognese ( off year WMAW)

Deed of the Red Knight

A few of these events included fundraising for various charitable organizations.

The guild of St Michael, which is a subset of Hoplologia, is dedicated to hosting more fund raisers in the coming years. We encourage members in other provinces and states to organize their own fundraisers if they feel so inclined.

Financial matters and Bursary program.

We know it can be hard to afford to purchase large equipment for mess groups including kettles and tents. we encourage people to raise money by hosting events and factoring in a 20 percent profit in order to help support large equipment purchases.

We understand, however that not all groups can host events, and in order to help them, we intend to offer a bursary program, starting this year. It will be awarded on a first come first serve basis, and the application will be available here. The amount available will depend in the solvency of the Compagnia but we hope to be able to award $500 a year in total.

Journal

Elisabeth Beattie is beginning a Hoplologia journal, in which people can publish their research and discoveries related to reenacting and martial arts of any historical period. You can read more about that here.

Orginizational logistics.

As of 2019, Aurora Simmons is acclaimed Captain.

3 new Directors were elected:

Elisabeth Beattie

Christian Cameron

Keight Maclean.

Future events

2019 event schedule is available on our Compagnia Facebook page.

Fil Walker sent a proposal for a formal historically based archery tournament event.

This idea was met with general acclaim and will hopefully take place in 2020

Matt Lanteigne sent a proposal to attend Pennsic war in 2020.

There are still many logistics to be worked out in order to make this possible so it will continue to be discussed.

Lances, and activities at events

We had some confusion at Red knight in 2018 as to how Lances should work.

We would like to move to a system wherein everyone, including non-combatants are part of a semi-permanent lance. For the future, in order to receive “ pay” people will need to be in a lance before the pay parade. They will be paid according to their role in their lance. Participants will only be paid for Red Knight, in order to streamline the process.

More information on this will be offered before Red knight 2019.

We know that sometimes combat exercises can be dull for those who don’t wish to participate.

We encourage non-fighters to get creative with planning historical activities that they may wish to do while combat activities are taking place.

If you have an idea for an activity you’d like to organize at an event, please let the person in charge of the event know before hand and they will try to integrate it into the schedule.

Future business

Our Chicago members have found a promising site at which to host events in the future.

Tasha Mele also proposed that a formal medieval dinner, hosted in an indoor site and with a modern kitchen, could be a good event for the future.