A tough, long winter is almost behind us and we will savour the March sun and Spring breezes that much more. Our 5th year since incorporation has been full of activities to help our members with information and instruction to install free power via renewable energy components in building our renovation projects.

We started the year on an upbeat note by hiring Karen Gventer as an Executive Assistant to the Co-ordinator, who just could not cope with the ever increasing workload. With her computer skills, we vastly improved the web site and also started e-mailing our newsletters to members on-line. Our hope was that we would be successful in several grant applications to extend her 2 month contract over most of the year. Funding did not come in as expected, we received only a small grant from the Friends of the Environment Foundation.

A tour of renewable energy demonstration sites in the Goderich area was arranged by the Solwind Enerco partners and co-sponsored by CFRE. It met with great enthusiasm and, as word spread, many members who were not able to take part are looking for a repeat.

We were kept busy with invitations to have displays at quite a number of events and festivals. Starting with the Organic Conference in Guelph, then the Earth Expo in Lion's Head, the Spring Fair in Toronto, 2 Festivals in Kitchener, Clean Air Festival in Guelph, Natural Life Festival in St. George and even at an Electric Power 2020 Seminar in Duluth, Minnesota. The co-ordinator was able to combine this trip with attendance at the Great Lakes United AGM in Two Harbors later that week. Of course we didn't miss our chance to display at the Feast of Fields in September and at the Green Power Trade Show in Toronto in November. Word about our activities must have spread all the way west to B.C. because we were invited to submit a brief write-up about CFRE for the West Coast Environmental Law Association's Collection ofEnvironmental Success Stories.

True to our commitment to, "speed up introduction of clean and safe renewable energy thereby accelerating the phaseout of polluting fossil and nuclear energy," we tookpart in nuclear information tours and sessions offered by Ontario Power Generation (OPG). We also brought our concerns to licencing renewal and radioactive waste site approval hearings by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). We achieved a small victory in our intervention on the Bruce Used Fuel Dry Storage Facility (BUFDSF) licence application, where the Commission ruled in favour of our contention that soil sampling would have to be done before any construction could go ahead. We also intervened in the Screening level Environmental Assessment on the re-start of the laid-up 30 year old Pickering 'A; reactors.

Our Board of Directors saw changes when 2 members resigned due to work pressure. We had no problem replacing them thanks to Cindy MacDonald from Kitchener and Andrea Chapell from Waterloo accepting our offer to serve. In October, Carey Bergman, our long-term secretary, moved to Saskatchewan, and we had to look for a replacement. We were very happy when George Wright, a long-time CFRE supporter, representing the Eastern Ontario region, agreed to fill the vacancy. Cindy will act as the secretary on a temporary basis.

At a board meeting in October assessing our budgetary picture we had to make the painful decision to cut Karen's contract to one day per week. In the meantime she has opted to serve as a consultant to CFRE 8 hours per week, thereby relieving us of the extra employer's payroll contribution.

The year 2000 has been another successful year encouraging and instructing people to help clean up our environment by taking steps toward conservation and people power independence from polluting, non-renewable energy generation! And we could not have done it without the help and dedication of those many volunteers and a number of generous donations from our members our thanks to all of them!!

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