As membership dwindles, Scarborough Legion struggling to keep the doors open

ABOVE: Legion branches struggle with declining memberships. Cindy Pom reports. 

TORONTO – When Wayne Powell joined Legion 258 of the Royal Canadian Legion in 1981 there were 2781 members.

Now, he said, they are struggling to keep the Highland Creek Branch at 45 Lawson Road in Scarborough above 900 members and have resorted to selling chocolates bars and cookies to “keep the doors open.”

And as veterans grow older and fewer, that financial struggle is mirrored by dozens of other branches of the Royal Canadian Legion across the country.

Clifford Ferguson joined the infantry of the Royal Canadian Army in 1944 when he was 17. The war ended before his training finished and he never went overseas.

He joined the Highland Creek Branch 37 years ago.

“There were more veterans still around 37 years ago, World War Two veterans, which were the backbone of the legion really,” Ferguson said. “There was a lot more going on with the legion. We used to have a lot more commercial things, more dances and stuff like that, years ago than we have now.”

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The Canadian Legion was founded in Winnipeg in 1926 and given royal assent by Queen Elizabeth II in 1960 becoming the Royal Canadian Legion.

The non-profit’s most notable campaign is the sale of poppies ahead of Remembrance Day, which funds the support of ex-service members who need help.

Membership in the Legion grew steadily in the 1930’s and exploded after the Second World War with the huge number of veterans returning to Canada. The Legion’s membership peaked in the 1960s with approximately 600,000.

But since then, membership has fallen by nearly half, sitting around 320,000 now.

And branches across the country have closed or declared bankruptcy as a result.

“It’s sad now to see all the legions that are hurting right now because of membership dwindling,” Ferguson said. “I hope the young fellas that were in Afghanistan join the legion and their relatives join too to keep the legion longer, otherwise it’s going to die right out.”

Ken Boyd served in the Royal Canadian Navy and joined the Highland Branch of the Legion 22 years ago. Back then, he would come every Friday night and drank and socialized with the 20 or 30 other guys.

“The place was packed. We used to have some great times. In fact my wife used to come up and drag me out,” he said. “It was crowded, very crowded.”

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But Boyd admits that the Legion isn’t attracting the membership it used to. He’s not exactly sure why it’s happening but thinks the younger generation of veterans can’t relate to the thinning numbers of Second World War veterans.

“They want music, they want dancing, they want a lot of stuff and a lot of legions can’t adapt to a younger generation,” he said.  “As long as you got members that are 80-years-old or more, alright, they don’t want the young kids, they don’t want the noise, they don’t want the drunken behaviour, et cetera. So it is a bit of an enigma that you can’t have both.”

Boyd is 65-years-old now. He has two daughters and neither of them are members of the Legion though its membership is open to the general public after decades of being restricted to servicemen and women.

But Boyd said, the Legion is about helping veterans and one way the public can do that is to recognize their service.

“It has nothing to do with the Legion. It really doesn’t. Remembrance is remembrance, I don’t care if you’re a member or not. You have to be taught to appreciate what the 11^th is,” he said. “I have been honouring remembrance day since I was a babe because my father taught me.

– With files from Cindy Pom