‘We have to support young veterans’: Manitoba legions push to get younger veterans involved – Winnipeg | 24CA News
The Royal Canadian Legion is pushing to get youthful veterans and their households concerned within the group.
Ernie Tester, the president of the Manitoba Northwestern Ontario Command of the Royal Canadian Legion, says whereas membership numbers are at present in good standing of their division, the main focus continues to be on getting youthful individuals concerned.
“We have to support young veterans, work with young veterans, communicate with young veterans and welcome them,” he mentioned.
Tester says the Manitoba Northwestern Ontario Command had 17,297 members as of Dec. 31, 2022, and about 14,000 have renewed their membership this 12 months. But he says they’re nonetheless pushing to get youthful veterans and their households concerned, with a purpose to make sure the Legion has help for years to return.
He says wanting as much as veterans when he was youthful was the explanation he received concerned within the legion again in 1975.
“I think it’s up to us to work with young veterans and we can support them and be proud of what they’ve done, what they’ve accomplished,” Tester instructed Global News.
“It means so much to me, I looked up to these veterans years ago and I still respect these veterans and I believe we have to respect all veterans.”
At the Royal Canadian Legion West Kildonan Branch 30 in Winnipeg, that’s precisely what they’re aiming to do.
Branch president Dominic Jones says they’ve no less than 300 members and are hoping to get youthful veterans concerned, but it surely’s proving to be a problem.
“A lot of the veterans I talked to, and some of them are friends of mine, personal friends of mine, they don’t feel welcome here, (in) a legion,” Jones instructed Global News.
“As to why, it’s hard to put a finger on it. And that bothers me, that really does – that a veteran wouldn’t feel welcome in a legion. The impression I’m left with is we don’t honour them the way we should.”
Jones says some could also be reluctant to share or focus on their service.
“A lot of them, they don’t want to talk about their experiences where they were – they don’t,” he mentioned.
“But when they sit together, veterans, then you know what each of them is talking about. They know exactly what each of them is talking about. We don’t. We haven’t lived it. And in that respect, maybe that’s where we’re falling down. We don’t understand what they’ve been through, what they’ve done, and in a way, I think we have to reach out to them in a better way than what we’ve been doing, and we are trying to change that.”
Daniel Kidd, the previous president of the provincial legion command, says the legion has modified all through the years.
“Younger veterans are still on the outside of it. The older veterans in the older days didn’t want the younger veterans in – The First World War didn’t want the Second World War and stuff like that. Over the years, (that’s changed).”
Jones says they’ve quite a lot of applications and occasions geared toward attracting youthful veterans in addition to members of the general public, together with kids’s occasions and ‘RED Fridays’ which intention to “remember everyone deployed.”
“What we’re trying now is to get those veterans in here and make them feel more welcome,” Jones mentioned.
“‘Thank you for coming’, sometimes that’s all you have to say and they feel welcome.”
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