I feel very humbled honoured and proud to stand before you as your  First Grand  Principal of Royal Arch Masons of New Brunswick. I am very grateful to all of you for putting your trust in me and I will carry out the duties of a First Grand Principal to the best of my abilities and ever remembering the solemn obligation I took earlier
today.

To all the incoming Grand chapter officers elected and appointed, to all the committee members and Grand Executive members, I am looking forward to working with you in the year ahead, on behalf of the Grand Chapter of RAM of New Brunswick , thank you all for stepping up and accepting these positions.

Companions, this year I would like to see all the chapters focus on recruitment and retention through education in the chapters, coaching and mentoring new candidates, getting them involved and participating in the chapter work.

We need to get out and visit the lodges in your area, and with the permission of the WM of the lodge put on some Royal Arch education which will give any potential candidates the information they need to make a decision to join your chapter.

Chapters should have education at each meeting when they are not doing degree work, the education should be interesting. I would like to see the chapters that don’t have an education committee form one, plan the education as far ahead as possible, put the education topic in the chapter notice, and the Grand chapter web site, this will give the companions a chance to have a look at the education topic, this will create discussion and make the education more interesting.

In chapters we must do the work well, do the degrees well, this will not only help with retention it will bring in new members and attract visitors.

One of the greatest threats to Capitular Masonry is the shrinking number of companions, most of the loses are due to demits and suspensions, we cannot stand by and do nothing about it, with some hard work in the chapters we can turn this around and in time we will see the benefits of our labours.
Companions, during my term I plan to visit all the chapters in this jurisdiction at least once, I am looking forward to visiting each chapter and I thank you in advance.

Thank you all for being Royal Arch Masons.