2024-25 Mentor Award
The Rotary Club of Charlottetown Royalty has announced that longtime volunteer, educator, and community anchor Steve Connolly is the 2024 winner of the prestigious Rotary Mentor Award.
Connolly becomes the 37th Rotary Mentor Award winner, and he joins his father, the late Stephen P. Connolly, Sr., who was just the second Islander to receive the Mentor Award, in 1990, as the only father-son pair of honorees.
The award was presented at a gala dinner and awards ceremony in Charlottetown on Wednesday, November 13.
Steve Connolly, a Charlottetown native, and Marg, his wife of 62 years, are fixtures of the community, active in a number of organizations and causes, and have made a difference for countless people and causes. Steve and Marg have three adult children, Shayne, Kellie and Tracey, and six grandchildren.
“There are very few people in the Charlottetown area and the wider Island community who do not have a connection with Steve Connolly and the charitable and mentoring activities which he has done over the years,” said award committee chair David Hooley. “It’s a challenge to find a person who’s not on a first name basis with Steve Connolly.”
Connolly holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Saint Dunstan’s University, and a Masters of Education degree in Counselling from the University of Maine.
He was a counsellor in a number of Charlottetown area schools over a 21-year education career.
Connolly successfully moved to the insurance and financial planning sector with Sun Life of Canada, where he met great success. Eventually in 1998, he founded Connolly Financial Group in partnership with his son, Shayne. The focus of the Connolly Group is to concentrate on business and professional insurance, estate planning and working closely with client legal and accounting advisors. In 2010, Connolly received the industry’s highest honor by being named to the Sun Life Financial Hall of Fame.
Connolly suffered a serious heart attack in 2007, and complications created several near- death experiences for him. As a grateful survivor, he has documented his journey through heart disease in a book entitled “They Touched My Heart, A Cardioversion of a Love Story,” where he writes openly about his journey with critical illness from a patient perspective and his road to recovery. He has also presented his story to The Maritime Heart Center, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of PEI, the PEI chapter of the Financial Advisors Association of Canada (Advocis), and the Sun Life Financial Strategic Partners.
Connolly, now officially retired from the Connolly Group, is a volunteer member of the Seniors’ College of PEI where he and others work to promote the value of Seniors College to the community, including government and the general public. He has volunteered with and contributed to countless community organizations, some of which include the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation where he is a member of the QEH Foundation Legacy Society, Stars for Life Foundation, PEI Chapter of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Appin Road Day Camp, Charlottetown Minor Football, and the UPEI Basketball Backcourt Club.