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Canadian youth have once again risen to the challenge of remembrance, as this year’s winners of The Royal Canadian Legion’s annual literary and poster contests prove so ably with their images and ideas about the past and present of conflict and peace.

Red Thibodeau, former president of British Columbia/Yukon Command, knows first hand how veterans who left the Canadian Forces decades ago can miss out on Veterans Affairs Canada benefits. He was surprised in 2008 to discover he qualified for the New Veterans Charter Rehabilitation Program—even though he left military service nearly 30 years earlier. “Now VAC tells anyone being released or medically discharged what’s available and what they’re entitled to. We didn’t have that,” says Thibodeau, who injured his back in a fall in 1978 while stationed in Germany. He left the CF in 1980, after serving six years. “We were always under [...]

Previously, in the July/August Serving You, we discussed the Australian process of decision-making about disease causation, the Repatriation Medical Authority (RMA), an independent statutory authority which determines Statements of Principles (SOPs) for disease related to military service in Australian military forces. The United States, like Australia, has a similar formal process. Through the Office of Regulation Policy and Management, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) publishes proposed rulings and planned amendments to regulations concerning veterans’ benefits. This formal process consists in posting draft rulings with planned effective dates of implementation, seeking public input either online or in person. A not [...]

It was the perfect city in which to reaffirm a longstanding and honourable commitment to Canada’s veterans and their families. Located midway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Winnipeg is known as the “bull’s eye” of Canada, but for Legionnaires, the city—and one hotel in particular—holds an even more central meaning; it is the birthplace of their grassroots cause, one that has helped shape Canadian society and improve the lives of the people they care most about. Recognition of the Legion’s birthplace and the sanctioning of the Legion’s founding as an event of national historic significance were celebrated June 12, one [...]

It was a display of Eastern Canadian dominance at this year’s Royal Canadian Legion Dominion Darts Championships, held May 7-10 at F.E. Butler Branch in Chester, N.S. The tourney began on Saturday morning with a brief piper-led parade around the branch before the ceremony started at the cenotaph in the lower parking lot. President Marion Fryday-Cook read the Act of Remembrance. Dominion representative Ed Pigeau, the vice-chairman of the Dominion Command Sports Committee and Ontario Command president, placed a wreath. The darts soon began flying across the branch’s upper hall as the doubles competition began. While last year’s winning team was from [...]

The tides were in the home team’s favour April 23-25, as the Dominion Command Cribbage Championships turned into a Maritime sweep for cribbage players from across Canada meeting at Sussex, N.B., Branch. Prince Edward Island won the singles competition while Nova Scotia won the doubles and the host province, New Brunswick, took the all-important team title in a gruelling three-way contest with Nova Scotia and British Columbia. For the New Brunswick team of Paul Calhoun, Carl Nash, Roger LeBlanc and Dean McLaughlin of Marysville Branch in Fredericton, it was a sweet victory. Calhoun and Nash had been part of the team representing [...]

Here are the answers to our questions in the special Readers’ Quiz we had in our July/August issue dealing with poppies. John McCrae was serving in the medical corps as a doctor near Ypres, Belgium, during the Second Battles of Ypres when he wrote In Flanders Fields. Punch Magazine published In Flanders Fields anonymously on Dec. 8, 1915. Moina Michael who was living in New York during the First World War wrote We Shall Keep The Faith. Anna Guerin convinced Field Marshall Earl Haig that the manufacture of poppies could help raise funds for injured war veterans. The shops where poppies and other items were [...]

Legion House in Kanata played host to a very special visitor May 11 as Princess Margriet of the Netherlands came to Dominion Command headquarters to plant a symbolic tree and pay her respects to the Canadian servicemen and women who helped to liberate her homeland 65 years ago. Princess Margriet and her husband, Professor Pieter van Vollenhoven, joined Dominion President Wilf Edmond in the ceremonial planting of the young London Planetree in Legion House’s front garden. “It is a real pleasure for me to have such a distinguished member of the Dutch royal family and her husband here today,” said Edmond, standing [...]

His name was Alfred Guibault, and he lived near the Ottawa River in Aylmer, Que. He was a private, and he died horribly during the fighting for Regina Trench in 1916. Ninety-two years after the First World War the circumstances of his service and the circumstances of thousands of others who served are available for all to see—but only if you want to see. Adam Gutoskie wanted to see. The Grade 11 student from D’Arcy McGee High School in Gatineau, Que., was one of several students who earlier in the school year made use of a popular learning experience through the [...]

Whether it was quietly lining up to sign one of the Books of Reflection on Parliament Hill or attending a ceremony in the provincial capitals or at Ottawa’s National War Memorial, thousands of Canadians found time to mark the end of an era, the passing of the last of the First World War veterans. April 9, Vimy Day, the 93rd anniversary of the battle which many say shaped Canada as a nation, was chosen as the day to mark the passing of veterans from that period. The announcement was made shortly after John Babcock, 109, died in his home in Spokane, [...]