Happy New Year All,

As my first message to the membership as CAA President I would like to start by saying how very much I enjoyed the annual meetings in London. Matthew Beaudoin, Joshua Dent, and their team did an excellent job organizing a vibrant, fun and informative conference. We also welcomed a new Vice-President at the conference. Congratulations to Adrian Burke who is taking over the role of VP from Jennifer Birch, and of course I stepped into the shoes of William Ross who now becomes Past-President. On behalf of all of us I would like to thank Jennifer for her work on the executive. As a new president I am very glad that Bill will remain in the board for another year to provide much needed guidance.

I have been attending the annual conference since 1989 - longer than many of our members, but not as long as others. There have been many changes to the CAA during that time, but it remains an important part of my seasonal round that I look forward to. It is always great to hear about new research, meet old friends, and welcome new students into our membership. I very much hope that I will see most of you at the St. John’s meeting (April 29 - May 2, 2015). We have lots of interesting sessions and associated events planned.

Since last May, work has continued behind the scenes on a series of administrative issues that the CAA has been facing. Due to changes at Corporations Canada we had to update our constitution to maintain our Not-for-Profit status. These changes were approved by members at the last AGM, but that was really the first step for a series of necessary changes. For several years the CAA has been operating without Charitable Status. Charitable Status allows us to issue receipts for donations to the association and to help support our conferences. Without this status these contributions have dwindled. In order to reinstate our Charitable Status we have begun the required process of auditing our accounts between 2009 and present. We hope that much of this work will be completed within the next year, but hiring lawyers and accountants to help us has begun to drain the resources carefully set aside by insightful past executives. Nevertheless, we do have a plan in place and hope to put our current fiscal and administrative challenges behind us by 2016.

In the meantime we rely on your continued support so please remember to pay your membership fees and come and participate in our annual meetings so that we can keep our organization relevant and viable for the next generation of Canadian archaeologists.

Regards,

Lisa