Anyone who knows me will know I spent a very large part of my life engaged in service to Canada’s veterans and their communities. Well, locally that is. When I saw this week’s DreemPort / SilverBloggers challenge for this week and read:
Tell us about someone who had an influence on you and the wisdom you gained from it...either positive or negative.
My first thought was I needed to add an ‘s’ to ‘someone’ and write about the ‘someones’ who influenced me. The generational influencers I experienced were veterans. I’ve been blessed to have known and worked with WW1, WW2, Korea War and Peacekeeping veterans. Their influence on my life can’t be separated into individuals even though some stand out. It’s some of those I’ll share about today.
This woman was one of the first veterans I met when I became a member of the Royal Canadian Legion. She asked me during our first visit what unit my dad served with. When I told her, she commanded that I find out what ship he sailed into Italy on. Yes, I said commanded, that is how she expressed her wishes.
Buff had commanded a forward aid station in Italy during WW2. She was used to stating directions and them being followed. It wasn’t said with arrogance but the confidence of someone who knew her expectations. I found out that she was on a ship that was torpedoed on their way to landing in Italy. Turned out my dad, he was on the ship that plucked the nursing sisters out of the water so the nurses could later help to save them on land.
She was a force to behold watching her in action. She had retired from public health when I met her and moved to this small community. For all her gruff, commanding exterior she had a heart as big as a mountain. She saw holes in the social infrastructure she didn’t just complain she acted.
There was a community care for vulnerable members of this community before the province implemented a program. The program she moved to establish worked with young people in vulnerable situations as well as support to seniors who needed supports.
She was the driving force behind establishing a Christmas Hamper program to be ran by the Legion with community support. The program provided extra food and toys for kids at Christmas time to those vulnerable members of the community supported during the year. The program is still running today almost 50 years later. I had the privilege of heading it up for 5 of those years.
A motorcycle dispatch rider from WW2. He served in the European theatre. Dispatch riders needed nerves of steal to move messages through the lines. Equipped with a motorcycle and a sidearm they went about their work. They were killed or injured at a very high rate.
Don returned home, married and raised a large family while farming and working as a butcher at a local store. He was a dedicated Legion member and active in his church. The church I eventually became active in. I admired his quiet, humble manner. He didn’t worry about being noticed, he worried that those he could help got the help they needed.
He worked with Buff on the hamper program, taking it over when she could no longer do it. When a local food bank the Legion had helped found needed help to keep running he stepped in to run it. When a fire relief effort for 14 families who lost their home when an apartment building burned down needed to be led, he stepped in and spent a summer getting those families into accommodations and their lives restarted.
I followed him as Branch President. In doing so I had the privilege of receiving immeasurable guidance from him on how the branch could and should serve veterans and the community. In gratitude I had the honour of nominating him and shepherded through him receiving the Meritorious Service Medal, the highest award the Legion gives. We both shed some tears as he was presented with it that night.
Charlie, as he was known, was among the most highly decorated Canadian WW1 veterans. He had the Victoria Cross, Military Cross and Military Medal yet to meet him, you hardly would have known he was a veteran. He was so gentle and kind. Like so many veterans I knew, he didn’t speak of his service unless called upon.
I was at a branch dinner when he was asked to speak of his actions to earn his decorations. He called it ‘just a bluff’ and moved on to speaking of other things he’d been doing. The ‘just a bluff” was taking 35 Germans prisoner on his own. He did bluff them into thinking they were surrounded. He too returned home to serve his community and the Legion in support of his fellow veterans.
I remember one time I was on lunch at my job in Toronto and doing some work on an event I was helping to organize to honour Charlie. There was a photo of him laying on the table. My work partner noticed it and asked how I knew Charlie. I told him what I was doing and why. Turned out my work partner had known him when he helped to run a store in his area. He had no idea of Charlie’s history. Didn’t surprise me, typical Charlie.
I was a young member when Charlie was in his 90s. One of the most memorable experiences of him was a bitterly cold, snowy Remembrance Day that Charlie had accepted an invitation to take the salute from the parade on the return march from the service at the local cenotaph.
As we passed by him, I saw he was doing so in uniform without topcoat. In his mind he felt it was an honour to be asked. We felt honoured for him to agree to it. Talk about an energy exchange. During the next four decades when I participated in Remembrance Day Services every year I never wore a topcoat, no matter what the weather was. It was my silent tribute to Charlie.
I could go on naming other veterans individually, both locally and in the wider Legion community, who I was influenced by. Some of them never knew their influence on my deeply held beliefs of the value of service.
When I first became involved on the executive I remember looking at the official letterhead and noticing the tagline at the bottom of the page, “They served until death, why not we?” I observed so many of them do exactly that. Service, not for self, but for those who were in need.
So often they did so, quietly, without ego. Results mattered more than notice.
Shadowspub writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc. Her Nicheless Narrative podcast airs on Thursdays each week.
NOTE: unless otherwise stated, all images are the author’s.
Some of the image work may have been done in Midjourney for which I hold a licence to use the imges commercially.
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