Royal Canadian Legion members fear for future,
Veterans worry about what shutdown will do to plummeting membership
Older members of the struggling Royal Canadian Legion are wondering when or if they will be able to gather again.
As the coronavirus claims the lives of seniors across the country, Clifford Ferguson, a 92year-old veteran, has been holed up in his Scarborough apartment worrying about Canada’s largest volunteer organization dedicated to veterans. The organization has already been grappling with dwindling membership and yearly branch closures.
Like many other not-for-profit organizations, the Royal Canadian Legion, is banking on some level of government relief for its struggling branches nationwide.
While they wait, Ferguson, 92, said locations like his Highland Creek Branch 258 face questions on many fronts, ranging from how much assistance they will be able to give to initiatives for veterans, and the fate of commemorative events like Remembrance Day.
“It’s tough because of the uncertainty,” said Ferguson, who enlisted during the Second World War but didn’t see action because the armistice was declared before he could be deployed overseas. “I feel we’re going to pull out of (COVID-19), but it’s going to take a while.”
With revenue from hall rentals and fundraisers drying up, some branches have launched online campaigns through sites like GoFundMe to offset the losses.
Founded in 1925, the Legion is Canada’s largest veteran support and community service organization, with roughly 250,000 members. Its poppy campaign raises about $20 million annually.
Gerry Morgan, district commander of 21 branches in Toronto, acknowledged “we now have a big problem with the future,” with the uncertainty of what social rules will apply during the coming months. Morgan said keeping “a membership is one of the most difficult obstacles we have.”
Morgan said the prolonged isolation is hard on older members because “right now their lives are being shut off,” he said. “Many members who are older utilize much of their social time there.”
Age will be a big factor in member retention for an organization where the majority of “our members are over 60 years old,” said Royal Canadian Legion Dominion president Tom Irvine. “We’re going to lose members after this but hopefully they will come back.”
The Legion’s national command, which allocated $3 million in emergency funding to its 1,350 branches (roughly $3,000 per branch), has expressed concern about branch closures and has written to the federal government seeking clarity about whether the Legion qualifies for aid.
“We have never gone to the government for a handout,” Irvine said. “But in this particular case, we’re going to struggle and if we don’t get assistance many more of our branches will go.”
Pre-COVID, anywhere from two to four branches closed yearly. “Some of the branches we won’t be able to save,” he said.
Toronto branches support a host of veterans’ causes, such as the Tony Stacey Centre for Veterans Care, a 100-bed nursing home; and Finchurst, a rental apartment for senior veterans.
About 97 per cent of the proceeds from the $1 million in annual poppy campaign donations in Toronto go toward the immediate needs of veterans or their spouses.
Other than visiting the Legion a handful of times each month, for recreational and social activities like the Friday night dinners, Ferguson prides himself on being part of the ceremonial colour guard, a fixture during commemorative events.
“The Legion served as a place where you could go and talk to guys who had been through the same thing,” said Ferguson, a member for 32 years.
For most of his time as a member, Branch 258 “was a vibrant place,” but in recent years “things kind of died down and we were pretty much bankrupt until recently, when we sold the property” at 45 Lawson Road. Branch 258 has about 460 paid members, a big drop from the roughly 2,500 in 1999. Ferguson, who was discharged from the Canadian Forces soon after enlisting in 1944 after the fighting ended, has witnessed the folding of many branches over the years.
“It happens quite often,” he said. “This will definitely hurt the weaker and smaller rural branches.”
Veterans at Belleville’s Branch 99 had to cancel D-Day ceremonies planned for June. The branch is losing out on the roughly $5,000 a month it would make from fundraisers, dinner dances, dart leagues and other revenue generators like hall rentals.
“We’re not getting any income,” said Branch 99 president Shirley Stewart.
With the lion’s share of its members being seniors, a group deemed the most vulnerable to the virus, she said upcoming marquee ceremonies like Remembrance Day, which involves large gatherings at cenotaphs, hang in the balance.
Like Branch 258, its Belleville counterpart is active on the local scene, putting together care packages for veterans in nursing homes and donating to facilities such as the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre in Ottawa and the Sunnybrook Veterans Centre in Toronto. But much of that support is now in limbo.
It’s not the future she envisioned for a branch launched in 1927. Still, “we’re doing everything we can to keep it together and we don’t want to fold.”