The Moderator Toastmasters Club was founded in 1979 by Lilli Janzen.
Lilli was already an experienced member of the Saint Lawrence Toastmasters Club when she decided that there was an opportunity to create a new club that would give every member a chance to shine. And so she teamed up with one or two fellow Saint Lawrence Club members to begin the long, painstaking process of founding a different kind of Toastmasters club. Endless hours were spent discussing and planning the future club – of special help was Peter Holland, Lilli’s right-hand in building the Moderator Club from a beautiful idea to a weekly reality. Another key person was Will Taylor, who served as the club’s second president, and was a formative presence in those early days. It was due to this dedicated effort that the Moderator Club has not merely survived but flourished for over forty-five years.
How We Got Our Name: “Moderator”!
We were named the “Moderator Toastmasters Club” due to the fact that Lilli was employed at the time with Canatom, a prominent company in the Canadian nuclear energy industry. The moderator is the component of a nuclear reactor that controls the nuclear reaction, enabling it to generate usable energy. And usable energy is what the Moderator Club has been generating to this day!
Our Values
Encouragement: We strive to maintain an open, supportive environment at every meeting, which encourages each member to take the risks that promote personal growth in confidence, communication skills, and leadership ability. As Lilli put it, we aim to cultivate the courage to be imperfect – a key to personal development and happiness.
Fun: We learn by having fun. Back in the eighties we named ourselves the Mod Squad, after the hit television show of the sixties. We were the crazy clowns at every district conference; we even had Mod Squad t-shirts specially made for these events! Humour, laughter and high spirits were the vital chemistry of every meeting, and that spirit enlivens our meetings to this day. Furthermore, ever since the founding of our club we have maintained the tradition of Post-Toasties – the “meeting after the meeting”, when we go out to a nearby restaurant to chat about the meeting, discuss ideas and projects, and simply get to know one another better.
Welcoming: The Moderator club warmly welcomes people of all backgrounds to visit, to take part as welcome guests, and to become active members. Members can feel free to give speeches on whatever topics are of interest to them.
Our Educational Program
Like all Toastmasters clubs around the world, our weekly meeting is based on the educational program and meeting format developed by Toastmasters International. We conduct formal club business briefly at the start of the meeting, followed by a variety of speaking activities, from two-minute impromptu speeches to longer prepared speeches, ending with brief helpful evaluations for every presentation given
during the meeting.
Everyone, members and guests, is free to speak in either French or English. Ours was the first officially bilingual club in our Toastmasters District (District #61), and we strive to maintain a lively blending of the two languages.
Meeting Locations: A Varied History
The Moderator Club has always been a Montreal downtown club, with one brief exception in the late eighties. During our first ten years we met at the beautiful Mount Stephen Club on Drummond Street, which is now part of Le Mount Stephen, the new luxury hotel. After that, we met for a couple of years at Restaurant Place Van Horne, a small uptown restaurant, followed by a move back downtown to Maison Alcan on Sherbrooke Ouest (now Rio Tinto Alcan) where we spent some three years. This was followed by a succession of locations, including the Aon Parizeau offices on McGill College Avenue, the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association on Peel Street (now known as the MAA) and a brief return to the Mount Stephen Club at one point.
After this long period of wandering, the Moderator Club finally found a home at the Standard Life building on the corner of Sherbrooke Ouest and de la Montagne, where we continued to hold our meetings for about twenty years. When Standard Life of Canada was acquired by the Manulife Insurance company, we began meeting in 2018 at Maison Manuvie, the newly completed Manulife building on de Maisonneuve Ouest. We held our meetings there until March 10th, 2020 – our last meeting before the Covid shutdown!
Some two years passed as we continued to meet every Tuesday evening entirely on Zoom, followed by about a year of “live” meetings at the YWCA – “Y des Femmes” – on Rue Crescent and René Levesque Ouest.
We were then fortunate to have a member who got us a meeting room at the Sun Life building on Rue Metcalfe, which became our home for nearly two years. After Sun Life we spent a few months back at the YWCA, until we moved to our current home at the Scotia Bank building on the corner of Sherbrooke Ouest and Metcalfe. We have been happily meeting there since October 2023, in an eighth-floor conference room with a beautiful view of Mount Royal – it doesn’t get more “Montreal” than that.
We owe a debt of gratitude to several members who over the decades went out of their way to find new meeting locations, sometimes with their employers, sometimes through other contacts. We would not have had such fine meeting places for over forty-five years without their help – thank you!
Anniversary Banquets
Almost since the founding of the club, we have held anniversary banquets every five years at a variety of beautiful venues, starting with the Mount Stephen Club itself, through a succession of fine downtown hotels, ending with the Hotel InterContinental in 2014 and 2019. Due to Covid we have not organized a banquet since then, but a key member of our club has made it a new tradition to hold an in-meeting celebration every 50th meeting, with an invitation to past members and guests. We never miss an opportunity to turn an ordinary evening into a party.
Annual Summer Picnics
It is now a well-established tradition to gather in late July for an annual picnic at Parc Jarry. This all started when we held a picnic at Parc Angrignon in September 2020, as a way of getting together in person during that first year of Covid isolation and online meetings. The following July, in 2021, we held our first picnic at Parc Jarry and have continued this happy tradition ever since. We add to the fun by encouraging everyone to bring guests, including children, pets and even spouses!
The Future!
Our future success is limited only by our willingness to carry on our club’s tradition of encouragement, fun and being welcoming to all. This winning combination has worked for over forty-five years, and will continue to make the Moderator Club the place where everyone makes full use of the Toastmasters International program: to master public speaking technique, to give and receive encouraging speech evaluations, and to take on leadership roles at every level. Why not visit one of our meetings some Tuesday evening, and enjoy the Mod Squad experience?
This article is written by:
Brian Saikaly
Joined the Moderator Toastmasters Club in February 1984. Three times club president; VP Education and Treasurer several times.
