As the days count down towards Nov.11, up and down the Coast four branches of the Royal Canadian Legion (RCL) are doing what they always do: offering scarlet poppies to passers-by and putting the finishing touches on Remembrance Day ceremony plans.
They're preparing to tell the story they always tell. It's a story Coast Legions tell compellingly, with the poetry of In Flanders Fields, with the notes of the Last Post, with the history etched on the faces of our Second World War veterans - a tale of honour, of courage, of soldiers' sacrifice.
Yet when Remembrance Day passes, and the poppies disappear from coats, local Legions will turn back to a harder yet crucial task: telling a new story.
"What we're selling is community, not veterans," said Bill Perlstrom, RCL zone commander for the Sunshine Coast zone.
He said, while the RCL is still Canada's largest organization funding and politically advocating for veterans' needs, the organization's emphasis has shifted. These days, Legions focus on serving their entire communities through volunteer service and raising funds for local charities; he estimates that the Sunshine Coast zone branches have raised upwards of $10 million for local charities since they were chartered. Moreover, one-time membership barriers have been lifted and now anybody and everybody is welcome to join.
And local legions' ability to survive, hinges on communicating the shift away from a military-only organization.
"Without getting the message out that we're community-based, the Legion will die," he said.
The bigger picture
The need to re-invigorate the RCL stems from a loss of members - most recently, due to the deaths of Second World War veterans. Nationally, Legion membership has been dropping steadily from a high of just over 600,000 members in 1984 to just under 350,000 last year. This membership drop, coupled with the high costs and efforts required to maintain aging buildings across the country, have led to closures and amalgamations. In British Columbia alone, approximately half a dozen Legions have closed in the past decade, according to RCL BC/Yukon Command's assistant command secretary, Joanne Henderson. The most recent closure was the Ex-Service Women's Branch No. 182 in Victoria in 2009.
Across the country and province, ladies' auxiliaries have also been shutting down. These sister organizations to the RCL have traditionally helped with meal preparation and hosted their own fundraisers - both to support local charities and to help fund Legions' operating costs. Henderson noted that since the Legion opened up membership to women several decades back, many women have been members of both a Legion and a ladies' auxiliary. As women have gotten older, she said, many have only felt able to support one organization and have left the ladies' auxiliary.
The Coast's four Legions - Pender Harbour, Sechelt, Roberts Creek and Gibsons -are, as a whole, doing better than many. Perlstrom notes that unlike many in other communities, the Coast's Legions are actually showing "slight growth," mostly amongst a 30-something crowd; also, as of last month, they were all in the black.
But the heart of each Legion's current situation lies in the details.
Pender Harbour: hanging on
Currently the most beleaguered among the Coast's Legions, the Pender Harbour Legion, is facing serious financial pressures and scrambling to drum up $50,000 for a needed roof repair.
This is a hard turn of a events for a Legion which expanded four times since it was chartered in 1946, outgrowing a hut, then a bungalow, and a logging camp dining room, before opening its new - and still current - facility in 1974.
"We're keeping our heads above water, but I'll tell ya, we're just hanging on by our fingernails," president Walt Wickson said.
Wickson said the Legion is currently applying for a grant and a bank loan to cover the roof repair, but noted that the Legion's only real way to meet its operating costs is through kitchen and bar sales.
He added that with a quarter of its membership part of Pender's transient summer population, the Pender Harbour Legion's 249 members often feel like even less, in terms of how many people come out to support the place. Moreover, he said, members are generally well in to their senior years -with the energy levels to match.
"I'm 70 and I'm classed as one of the younger ones," he said.
As to membership growth, he pegged it at virtually nil.
"We've had just about as many members decease this year as we've had join," he said, noting that he first got involved with the Legion because he could see it dying.
He added that the Legion's ladies' auxiliary had to hand in its charter a few years' back, due to its aging membership.
Yet if the Legion goes under, Wickson said, the community won't just lose its Remembrance Day ceremony plus the funds the Legion raises for local charities through gaming activities; it'll lose a key support for many seniors plus 36 "ordinary" members - veterans, former firefighters or former RCMP members.
"It's a place for the older generation to gather," he said. "If it's lost, where do they go?"
The Legion's possible demise, he said, could also mean the loss of a healthy meals program, run by non-profit Area A Seniors Housing Project (AASHP), which weekly prepares 45 meals for local seniors out of the Legion's kitchen.
Program co-ordinator Linda Curtiss notes that before setting up at the Legion, AASHP investigated various community alternatives -and found none.
What are the Pender Harbour Legion's chances for survival?
"I honestly don't know," Wickson said. "We really need the community to come out and support us."
Sechelt: planning for change
The Sechelt Legion is adjusting to its first year without the energies and financial help of an active Ladies Auxiliary, and plotting how it's going to face down a future of mounting costs.
The branch, chartered in 1934, with a ladies' auxiliary shortly after, currently has 450 members, down from 800 just under a decade ago. For now, president Dennis Johnson said, membership numbers are maintaining and the organization is continuing to raise money for community organizations through meat draws and other gaming activities, plus look after 147 ordinary members - the largest group of veterans of any Coast branch.
But Johnson said the organization is still grapping with the loss of energies and fundraising power - some of it going towards the Legion's operating costs - since its ladies' auxiliary turned in its charter last year. The members, he said, are still volunteering with the branch, but are no longer co-ordinating their own set of additional fundraisers.
"It's like cutting off your left arm," he said, noting that at the time that it shut down, 40 of the auxiliary's 50 members were in their 80s. "They were such an integral force and we're now realizing, this year, just how much of a force they were."
On a financial level, he said, the Legion is dealing with the problems of an aging building, including a current need to replace a water heater.
"You're looking at $5,000, $6,000, money going out, money going out," he said.
To counteract these costs plus lower membership levels than in earlier years, Johnson said the branch has been pushing its kitchen and weekend entertainment. But that strategy, he said, has raised some hackles.
"One of the members told me they don't like it anymore because I'm turning it into a disco and a restaurant," he said. "And it doesn't seem to cut any ice that if we don't draw people in and sell our products, we don't exist."
Moving forward, he said, the Legion's five-year planning committee is looking at the option of downsizing its operating space by renting out the hall.
What are the Sechelt Legion's chances for survival?
"I think we're OK if we do some physical downsizing and aggressively look for new members and get the word out that no, you don't have to be in the military, no your grandfather didn't have to be in the First World War [to join]," he said.
Roberts Creek: young and restless
Where other Coast Legions talk wistfully about attracting the young, the Roberts Creek Legion, with its popular weekend DJs and bands, has achieved it.
"We have maybe 100 members between 19 and 35," said Legion president Rob Marion, who himself is only 40.
Chartered in 1947, with several expansions before settling in its current location, the Legion is once again in an expansion mode. Marion noted that membership has climbed to a 20-year high of 265, from 180 five years ago.
But one downside of the branch's young population, Marion noted, is its transience.
"We have a lot of people join each year, but they don't necessarily renew the next year," he said, noting that people in their early 20s may be off to university or elsewhere.
A young membership, he said, is also less likely to volunteer time to support the branch.
"It's not as easy to get people involved," he said, noting that younger people seem to have generally less interest in service-based organizations than in previous generations. "When I grew up, we had church basement stuff all the time and everybody came out for all that stuff -white elephant sales and bazaars and teas. And it seemed like everybody was more than happy to volunteer for all these things."
Financially, he said, the Legion is doing "OK" though he noted the branch has had some struggles this year and has cut back its Monday to Wednesday hours. Four years ago, he said, the branch also lost its ladies' auxiliary whose active members used to run bingo games.
As to the future, Marion said the job ahead is to find members who are willing to give up their time to attend meetings and keep the place running.
"Twenty years down the road, hopefully some of these younger folks are going to end up being on the board and keeping the gears in motion for our organization," he said.
Gibsons Legion: healthy and growing
If the fates are smiling on one Coast Legion, it's in Gibsons as it has the flushest membership on the Coast, still has the support of its Ladies' Auxiliary, and is growing to boot.
The first branch to open on the Coast, the Gibsons Legion was chartered in 1932 with its ladies' auxiliary shortly afterward.
"We're not one of those Legions that is going down," branch secretary Wilma Jones said, noting that membership is at 670 and climbing every month. "Ours is really quite good."
With its ladies' auxiliary still at its side -unlike every other Legion on the Coast -Gibsons has a key aid, both in labour and operating funds, but also in raising money for local charities. Last year, the branch donated $30,000 to charity, and the ladies' auxiliary, another $15,500.
"Our biggest objective is getting bigger and better events to raise money for charity," president Harvey Metz said. "That's our main objective: raise money for charity."
The branch is the only Coast Legion to hold a Victory in Europe Day ceremony May 8, complete with a pipe band, colour party, and veterans, beyond its Nov. 11 ceremony.
While the branch seems to have dodged many of the current threats to Legions, it's keen to tell the story that it's "not just a veterans' hangout," and to keep working to attract younger generations to replace the losses of older members.
The Legion's future
Despite the membership losses over the past few years, Henderson said the membership declines and branch closures seem to be leveling off, as Canada has now lost most of its Second World War veterans. She anticipates, however, that a new set of loses will occur in another decade, when branches start to lose Korean War veterans. But to counteract this, Perlstrom said, the RCL will gain new relevance with the return of Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan.
"We have a whole new wave of young veterans that are coming back with trauma and all kinds of issues and the Legion hopefully is going to be there for them," he said.
On the Coast, he said, Legions' survival will hinge on how well Legions convey their new story: that their identity and work stretches well beyond veterans' issues. But he said the slight recent growth in Coast Legion membership indicates that that message is starting to get through.
"There is slight growth," he said. "And I think that's primarily because we're getting the message out that it's not an old farts' organization -it's a community-based organization."
