Rotary clubs gather for Peace Park Assembly

 Rotarians will gather in the Flathead Valley this week for the 80th annual Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park Assembly.

The event, hosted in alternating years by Canadians and Americans, will be sponsored this year by the six Flathead Valley Rotary Clubs.

There will be meals, tours, activities and a variety of speakers and performers at the Hilton Garden in Kalispell Friday and Saturday, and the assembly concludes Sunday with the traditional “Hands Across the Border Ceremony” in Glacier National Park.

The assembly is a recognition of the significant role Rotarians played in establishing the Peace Park 80 years ago.

Rotarians from Alberta and Montana met at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton in July 1931, passing a resolution that won the support of President Hoover and Canadian Prime Minister R.B. Bennett.

The international peace park was established the following year with a ceremony and dedication of a bronze tablet inscribed, “Permanently Commemorating the Relationship of Peace and Goodwill Between the Peoples and Governments of Canada and the United States.”

Saturday’s featured luncheon speakers at the Hilton will be Glacier Superintendent Chas Cartwright and Waterton Superintendent Iian Thomas.

The main event Sunday will be the 11 a.m. Hands Across the Border Ceremony at the Apgar Ampitheater, where Americans and Canadians line up to shake hands among uniformed Canadian wardens and Mounties and American rangers.

“It really is a pretty amazing event,” said Tamara Williams, president of the Kalispell Rotary Club. “There’s a lot of pageantry involved.”

Williams said as many as 300 people are coming to the valley for the event, in addition to members of the Rotary clubs of Kalispell, Evergreen, Whitefish, Bigfork and Columbia Falls.