The Owl award:

Presented annually to an RDRN member in recognition of their long and dedicated volunteer service to the organization and its values.

What values? It doesn’t hurt to consider what motivates us to join the RDRN and volunteer our time:

• It goes without saying that we value Central Alberta’s natural heritage, but there are many other things.
• We work as a TEAM – especially the Directors.

That means:

• We respect each other as people
• We share our talents and resources, and
• We enable each other – the support of our TEAM makes great things (even courageous things) possible.

This year we have picked Bob Kruchten to receive the Owl Award because this quiet and capable individual exemplifies our TEAM values so well.

Bob is about as Albertan as you can get.:

• Born on a farm near Daysland (east of Camrose)
• He graduated from his local high high school and attended university in Edmonton and Calgary
• Worked as a teacher for 35 years in several Alberta school districts
• His second career, and the one we are most familiar with was managing the book store at Kerry Wood Nature Centre – He did this for 19 years until his retirement earlier this year.
• Shortly after starting at the Kerry Wood Nature Centre, Bob became an RDRN Director.

When I asked Bob what lead him to the RDRN, he told me nature could never be ignored if you came from a farm. Abusing the land has serious long-term consequences, so it only makes sense to respect natural processes and value sustainability.

– a typical answer from Bob – short and to the point.

Bob has always been there whenever we needed something to make a project complete. When a problem presented itself, he’d be the one who spoke up and said “I’ll take care of it”, and he has never let us down.

Thankfully Bob is still very much involved with RDRN. This year he agreed to be our new treasurer. The next couple of years will be challenging and I for one am delighted to have his business skills and general wisdom working for us.

Thanks for all you have done, and thank you for continuing to be the rock we all lean on.