To every player, a note about ratings: since November there has been increasing difficulties with getting tournament rated; the CFC could not rate one school league tournament. Then, in Febuary, the system seems to have broken down with the backlog increasing continuously all over Canada, except for 2 clubs: Upper Canada College and Chess Academy in Toronto. There has been a steadily increasing lobby to repair the problems to the point where even the Executive would refuse to respond to emails. In early May, there was a temporary relief for the squeakiest wheels and we felt, too soon, that the crisis was over. Seems there is another battle coming up and we are gathering the crosstables of several organizers of Northern Ontario to send together - it will be harder to pretend they loose a big bunch than one individual tournament.

All this to state my continuous support of Bruce's effort to create a chess dynamics in Timmins and area. He works hard to provide a growing chess environment and feels betrayed by the lack of cooperation from the CFC. He is doing great work and we are working together with him to solve this problem.

Denis and Ellen Nadeau