Interesting stuff...

I'm surfing the internet in my apartment the other day, and I come across a website. Ok, so, you might say that coming across websites is to be expected if I'm surfing the internet. Sure. That might happen if one surfs. The interesting thing about this website was that it had a big RBC logo on it.

Not all that astounding, considering that I work for RBC and that I come across the corporate logo pretty much everywhere I turn. The unusual thing about this website is that my first thought was (and it was a half asleep thought at 5:30am on a Monday morning) "Hmmm… This isn't an RBC website." So after putting a significant amount of brain energy into processing this fact, (remember, pre-coffee here… You don't want to see Michel pre-coffee) I realized that this was a website for the Canadian Snowboarding Federation. Apparently RBC is a big supporter of the Canadian Snowboarding Federation and there's even a program named RBC Riders… Direct quote from the document describing the program:

RBC Riders is a program that can be operated by any organization affiliated with the CSF, including clubs, mountain resort activity centres, snowboard shops, and schools. The program consists of a minimum of three competitions. Although additional competitions may be added, they must respect a ratio of 30% competing to 70% training (including free riding) over the season.

I thought that was pretty awesome… RBC supporting local snowboarding… Random, but awesome. So, this gave me a thought. I have to admit it was later on in the day when I came around from my half-dead zombie-walk morning state. What else does RBC support that I don't know about ('cause I sure as sun rises in the morning didn't know about this one)??!

So, after a bit of research, I found a couple of things... (and these are things that are of interest to me… Gord Nixon, RBC's head honcho (mad props), knows we support way more than this.)

• The Olympics
• The RBC Canadian Track and Field Championships
• Freestyle Skiing (those crazy people who go up crazy jumps to spin a crazy number of times in the air)
• The RBC Canadian painting competition (25 000$ for winning art… impressive!)
• Local Hockey (through the Local Hockey Leaders Program)
• Scholarships… A lot of them. (I knew about this one… I had an opportunity to present a scholarship on RBC's behalf at the Credit Association of Greater Toronto's gala dinner…)
• The Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC) (yeah, really random)
• The RBC Bronwen Wallace awards for emerging writers

And my list could go on and on… I don't have a clue as to why we do this… I think I might just follow up on this one and find out.

More information to come on this stuff!!

Michel