If you asked most members what Landscape Ontario (LO) is, they might point to the magazines, Congress or the education programs. Those are real. But they aren’t what makes this association matter.
What makes LO matter is the volunteer sitting on a Chapter board in your region. The one on a Sector Group board planning a conference program. The people who could easily do nothing — and choose, year after year, to do something.
Most of that work happens where nobody sees it.
It’s the Chapter board member running a meeting on a Thursday night in March, in a room that’s half as full as they had hoped, thanking everyone for coming anyway. It’s the Sector Group volunteer on their third late-night email chain about a specification that most members will never read, but that quietly raises the standard of the entire industry. It’s the person who drives two hours each way to represent their region, because if they don’t show up, their region doesn’t have a voice at the table. It’s the mentorship a newer member gets over coffee that they wouldn’t get from any online platform. It’s the local event that pulls 20 contractors out of their trucks and into the same room for the first time all winter. It’s the answer to a regulatory question that only somebody who actually does this work could give.
None of that shows up in a budget line. All of it is what LO actually is.
I want to say something plainly to those volunteers: what you do matters more than the association could ever convey. You are the connective tissue between LO and the people it exists to serve. In a world where members have infinite digital options for education, networking and information, the thing they still can’t get anywhere else is someone from their own community who knows their work and shows up for it — that’s you.
That’s why I keep returning to volunteers when I think about the governance work still underway at the Provincial Board level. The specifics are still being worked through — real deliberation takes real time — and the shape of what we bring to members will land where it needs to land. But the test I keep coming back to is whether it makes your effort and your voices count for more, not less. Whatever we build has to pass that test. If it doesn’t, we haven’t built it right.
So this column is a thank you — to every Chapter board member, every Sector Group volunteer, every committee chair, every person who has said yes to do something they weren’t paid to do because it mattered.
We’re building this together — and you’re the reason it’s worth building at all.
Lindsey Ross
LO President
president@lglinc.ca
