Complaints ‘bring discredit,’ Legion says
The 82-year-old woman who raised concerns about the mistreatment of veterans has brought discredit on the Royal Canadian Legion, alleges a complaint filed against her by that organization.
Joan Beznoski was questioned by legion officials and an RCMP officer in January after she phoned legion headquarters in Ottawa to discuss her concerns about how veterans were being treated at her local branch in Manitoba.
She has since been suspended from the legion and could face a lifetime ban from the veterans’ organization she has belonged to for the past 36 years.
The complaint that Beznoski’s conduct “brings or tends to bring the legion into discredit” was filed April 4, two months before the Ottawa Citizen first reported on her situation.
The legion confirmed Tuesday an RCMP officer was involved in the Jan. 11 questioning of the 82-yearold, but said he was there in his capacity as the branch’s “chairman of the complaint committee.”
“I asked who he was and he told me he was an officer of the law,” Beznoski told the Citizen. “I told him he may be an officer but what did that have to do with the legion?”
Only after being challenged did the man acknowledge his legion position, she said.
“I saw it as intimidation,” Beznoski said.
The complaint, filed by Gail Conrad Davey, president of legion Branch 164 in Lac du Bonnet, Man., alleges Beznoski also breached her “obligations to the Legion and or (Legion bylaws).”
Beznoski’s troubles began after she tried to phone the legion’s dominion president, Tom Eagles, to voice her dissatisfaction about how the country’s largest veterans’ organization is treating former soldiers.
She never did get to talk to Eagles.
Beznoski was suspended after Brad White, the dominion secretary, wrote to legion executives in Manitoba.
In a letter, obtained by the Citizen, White pointed out Beznoski wanted Dominion Command, the legion’s administration organization, to conduct an investigation into continuing problems in the Lac du Bonnet branch, including allegations of bullying and disrespectful behaviour to veterans.
White, however, noted in a letter to Dawn Golding, executive director of the legion’s Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario Command, that he had no intention of looking into those allegations.
Golding, in turn, wrote to Conrad Davey, pointing out White’s comments and adding, “I fully trust you will take action as you deem necessary.”
As a result, Beznoski was asked to leave a bingo game and answer questions in a backroom at the legion hall.
The legion said in a news release Beznoski broke legion bylaws by trying to talk to Eagles, without first going to the branch and provincial officers of the organization.