There’s No Place Like This Place Annual Meeting
On the morning of June 12, 2026, the Greater Burlington YMCA held its 160th Annual Meeting. Nearly 60 members, volunteers, staff, and community partners gathered to reflect on the past year, hear inspiring stories, and celebrate the impact of the Y.
The morning began with a guided meditation led by Jill Nye-McKeown before attendees enjoyed refreshments and connected with one another. Outgoing Board Chair Noma Anderson welcomed everyone and reflected on her final Annual Meeting as chair. While her term as board chair has concluded, she shared that she looks forward to continuing to serve on the Board of Directors.
Noma also recognized an important milestone: this year’s meeting marked the Greater Burlington YMCA’s 160th Annual Meeting. Founded in Burlington in 1866—just 15 years after the first YMCA was established in Boston—the organization has served generations of Vermonters while continuing to evolve to meet community needs.
One of the morning’s most meaningful moments was recognizing the extraordinary service of Renee Bourget-Place, who stepped down after 18 years on the Board of Directors. During her tenure, Renee served in numerous leadership roles, including Chair, Vice Chair, Past Chair, Finance Committee Chair, and Treasurer. She shared her personal Y story, reflecting on how childcare, swim lessons, and scholarships provided stability and a sense of community for her family when her parents were very young. Her story was a powerful reminder of the lasting impact the Y has on families across generations.
The Annual Meeting also welcomed the Y’s newest board members: Victoria “Vic” Westgate of SRH Law, Luanne Cantor of NorthCountry Federal Credit Union, and Carol Pfeiffer of Dinse P.C. Elected earlier this spring, this was their first Annual Meeting as board members. Both Noma Anderson and President & CEO Dan Smith thanked them for their willingness to serve the Y and the broader community.
During his remarks, Dan recognized the dedication of Y staff and celebrated several significant accomplishments from the past year. He highlighted the Board’s strategic investments to expand early childhood education and program space, including the successful opening of the Winooski Early Childhood Center.
The impact of that investment is already evident. Since the Y assumed operation of the Winooski program, the cultural diversity of participating families has grown from 18% to 34%. Today, 29% of children come from homes where a language other than English is spoken—an increase of seven percentage points—and family structure diversity has increased from 7% to 16%. Together, these changes reflect a program that more closely represents and serves its community.
Dan also celebrated the Y’s expanding leadership in water safety. Partnerships in aquatics have helped increase access to lifesaving skills, including the successful advocacy for legislation requiring winter use of Personal Flotation Devices and the launch of the SAW (Safety Around Water) Program, which will teach every fourth-grade student in the Burlington School District how to swim.
The Annual Meeting concluded with two inspiring member stories from Paul Philbin and Patrick Standen. Their reflections perfectly captured this year’s theme: There’s No Place Like This Place. We are honored to share their remarks below.
Paul Philbin
My Y Story: Flat Water and The Three Pillars
It started with a photograph and a simple question. I was at the Y, showing the staff a picture of my nephew Zac and his baby daughter, Charlie. In the photo, they are next to a swimming starting block bearing a memorial plaque for my younger brother, Pierre. The inscription reads: “It was near and in the water that he was happy and free.” Seeing that image, someone asked me, “What’s your Y story?”
To answer that, I have to go back more than 50 years to North Bay, Ontario. In 1968, the new YMCA opened its doors. I was 15, in the tenth grade, and our family was already signed up. My parents didn’t hesitate. They raised us on three core pillars: reading, learning, and sports and recreation.
My history with the Y is intimately tied to Pierre. We were only a year apart, but in many ways, he led the charge. Pierre was an entrepreneur at heart, a natural hustler. By the time I was in the eleventh grade, he had marched into the Y and landed a job cleaning the locker and shower rooms before school. Ever the older brother riding his coattails, I got hired too. Winters in Northern Ontario are brutal. We would drag ourselves out of bed in the pitch-black, freezing mornings to be at work by 6:00 AM, then head off to class. But inside the Y, there was warmth. The head janitor was an incredibly congenial Englishman who took us under his wing and taught us how to drink proper English tea with milk and sugar to cut through the morning chill.
As that eleventh-grade year wrapped up, my own path expanded. I was selected to attend the Ontario Athletic Leadership Camp on Lake Couchiching, an intensive sports and leadership program for students across the province. I leveraged that experience over the next two summers to become a counselor for a Y summer camp out on Trout Lake.
Inside the main building, Pierre and I eventually used the facilities differently. I was a hockey and football player, drawn to contact sports. I tried competitive swimming, but it wasn’t for me. Instead, I was either at the Y or right next door at Memorial Gardens, playing hockey and taking power skating classes to stay in shape for the ice.
But for Pierre, the pool was a sanctuary. He suffered from severe allergies; his lungs couldn’t handle the biting cold of a hockey rink or the dust kicked up on a basketball court. So, swimming became his world. He thrived in it, moving into competitive swimming and lifeguarding. He was always better in the water than I was, especially on a slalom ski. He loved to be the first one out on the lake in the morning, slicing through the flat, glass-like water.
Life eventually took me away from North Bay. After college, graduate school, getting married, and starting a family, we had stints in Waterville, Maine, and Columbus, Ohio, before returning east to Burlington, Vermont, in the late 1980s. That was when the Y came calling again.
Both of our daughters, Brittany and Siobhan, participated in the Y’s LiveY’ers after-school program, embedded at Shelburne Community School, which was led by Tracy Tomasi. Brittany also joined the Y Dynamo swim team. Through her dedication, I worked my way up to timer and eventually an on-deck swim official, traveling with her to meets all over New England and New York state.
Water seemed to be the constant current running through our family’s life. Carol had spent her childhood vacationing in Maine, and we wanted the girls to experience that same connection to the ocean. In August 1993, we traveled to the coast near Bar Harbor for a family trip. It was there, with water all around us, that we received the news. Pierre had died after his long battle with glioblastoma.
But he never really left the water. Whenever I stand at the edge of the Y pool before the first swimmers get in, looking at that perfectly still, flat water, I immediately see Pierre seizing the moment.
Today, I’ve come full circle as a grandfather to Abidell and Fennec. My Y story is over half a century old, but it is still being written every week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I bring Abi to the pool. We linger after our swim while she drinks her bottle, just watching the other kids go through their lessons. We chat with the lifeguards on duty—Zuzu, Abe, Eliza, and Elsa—and catch up with the front desk staff, Liam, Matthew, Haydee, and Faarzein.
It truly is a lifelong community. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was swimming laps and realized the person sharing my lane was Tracy Tomasi. We had lost touch years ago after she and her spouse, Chris, sold their Good Times Café over in Hinesburg. We stopped our workout for five minutes to hug and catch up right there in the water before resuming our laps.
Sitting there over 50 years later, I realize it is the exact same safe place I remember from my youth. We are still following my parents’ pillars, and we are still finding that same freedom in the water.
Thank you.
Patrick Standen
Good morning. It’s an honor to be with you today at the Annual Meeting to share thoughts on the importance of the Y and to be with the very people who make this one of the most extraordinary institutions in our community.
Today, I want to talk about a simple phrase that carries a world of meaning: No place like this place.
At first glance, it sounds like a slogan. But when you sit with it and really think deeply – when you let it echo through the stories, the faces, the lives touched by the Burlington Y – you realize it’s something much deeper.
What is a place?
A place or topos is a specific location given meaning by human experience. Place is not an abstract geometrical space; it is a place of lived reality. Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, argued that place and space are not inherent physical objects, but foundational structures of human perception. Lived human experience transforms a neutral set of coordinates into a special cultural, historical, and psychological place; it is through daily human interaction with this place that it endows it with meaning.
Because the YMCA is not just a set of coordinates or even a structure or building. Nor is it just a collection of programs. It is not just a place where people come and go, or a room to exercise in, or to drop off their kids.
No, it is more. You, the staff and we, the members, make the Burlington Y into a force for human flourishing. A place where people rediscover their strengths, encounter a sense of belonging, and find their hope. A place where the four core values – caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility – aren’t just ideals. They become lived realities.
Caring: The Power That Changes Lives
Caring isn’t just talked about here: It’s something the Y does. It’s something you are.
Caring is the invisible thread that holds this community together.
Caring is also courageous. Maya Angelou once said that the first virtue is courage. It takes courage to care. It means showing up for people in their most vulnerable moments. It means believing in people before they believe in themselves.
Honesty: The Compass That Guides Us Forward
Honesty is the courage to see clearly. To tell the truth about our strengths, our weaknesses, and our opportunities. To look at our community and ask: What do people need now? What will they need next year? What will they need ten years from now?
Honesty keeps us from drifting. It keeps us grounded in mission, anchored, and aligned.
Honesty also allows us to dream boldly. When you know where you stand, you can see where you’re going.
The Y is a place like this because honesty is not a risk – it is a compass.
Respect: The Essential Ingredient of Our Humanity
Where else in modern life do people of every age, every background, every ability, every story share a space and a sense of belonging?
Where else do toddlers and retirees, athletes and beginners, newcomers and lifelong Vermonters, college students, and grandparents all find themselves under one roof – not just coexisting but connecting and striving for fitness and well-being.
Respect is not politeness. Respect is recognition. It is the belief that every person who walks through our doors carries unconditional worth.
And in a world that is increasingly divided, increasingly isolated, and increasingly fragmented, the Y stands as a rare and precious place where people remember what community feels like.
There is no place like this place because respect is not theoretical – it is practiced.
Responsibility: The Future We Choose to Shape
Responsibility is the value that turns intention into impact. You are not caretakers of a building alone – you are architects of futures. There is no place like this place because responsibility is not delegated – it is embraced.
In Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series, Inspector Gamache has four statements that lead to wisdom.
There are four short, powerful sentences he teaches:
1. “I was wrong.”
2. “I’m sorry.”
3. “I don’t know.”
4. “I need help.”
Throughout Penny’s novels, Gamache emphasizes that these four phrases, when truly embodied, are the foundation of true leadership and wisdom.
Conclusion: What “No Place Like This Place” Really Means
When we say, “There’s no place like the Greater Burlington Y,” we’re not talking about the pool or the treadmills, or the classes. I think it is about the feeling we get when we walk in. The sense of being seen. The sense of being safe. The sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves. It is home.