Over the past month, noteworthy Pembina Valley inhabitants have been named recipients of the King Charles III Coronation Medal, an honour that commemorates the King’s coronation and celebrates exemplary Canadians.
For one Morden recipient, Maurice Butler, receiving the medal is a full-circle moment.
Butler calls the accolade the “icing on the cake” since it coincides with his retirement from a five-decade volunteer career, but it also coincidentally hearkens back to another royal occasion to which he has a personal connection: Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation at Westminster Abbey.
A young Butler attended the coronation in 1953.
'I had a very good relationship with the community’
25 years later, he first laid eyes on Morden. Here, the life of service celebrated by King Charles III’s royal medal begins.
Soon after arriving, Butler became the town's chief of police, a position he held for about eight years.
During this time, he came to appreciate the region and the connections he established in it. They led to a prolific volunteering career that might be difficult to believe if one were unaware of Maurice Butler.
“I had a very good relationship with the community. I learned a lot about living in a small community as a big city boy,” he says. “It was a very welcoming ... in town, and I got along well with most people. I spent a lot of time building my relationships with small organizations.”
Butler looks back fondly to his involvement in the Corn & Apple Festival in particular.
“From that came a lot of other opportunities to provide my services as an individual in a volunteer capacity,” he says, adding that he also worked with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Habitat for Humanity, the Royal Canadian Legion, and schools in the area.
Establishing important community services and traditions
Beyond Morden, Butler also worked with people from Winkler to form the family violence committee that would eventually become Genesis House, a vital resource in the community today.
“Our objective there, as police officers, was to find a safe home for battered women,” he says. “One of our big accomplishments was to get that off the ground.”
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Throughout his volunteering, Butler played many roles. He emceed events and organized them, gave guest presentations in schools, and, in one of his favourite roles, played the jolly old elf himself.
“I always did Santa Claus for the kids in the area and businesses in the area that had their Christmas parties,” he says. “When I retired from Santa Claus, which was in 2020, I figured it out and I'd been doing it for fifty years. My son, with a pencil and a pad of paper and a calculator, estimated that I'd seen 28,000 children in those fifty years.”
‘One begets another’
Butler says that through his years of service, one opportunity always led to another because, as any volunteer knows, the chance to become involved is never scarce.
“It's always the same for me with volunteering for events and occasions — one begets another. Word of mouth is the greatest advertising,” he says.
Although volunteering has been a large part of Butler’s life, he says he’s slowing down these days.
“The last 50 years I've been in Morden, I've basically belonged to all those organizations in their turn and never looked back,” he says. “But unfortunately, ... [due to] having lost my wife seven years ago now and the debilitation of my physical condition, I can't do anything anymore. I’m kind of housebound .... I use a walker, I use an electric scooter to get around, and it's put a bit of a halt on my volunteer career.”
‘The culmination of everything’
One might say that after five decades of serving the community, it is a well-deserved break, but for Butler, although the hurdles to being as involved in volunteering as he’d like to be are regrettable, receiving a King Charles III Coronation Medal is the “icing on the cake” to end his career in the Pembina Valley.
“I think the culmination of everything [is that] I became a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal,” he says. “I can't think of a better way to finish than to be a recipient.”
A special moment with MP Branden Leslie
Butler received his medal along with 29 other awardees in a ceremony held by Portage-Lisgar MP Branden Leslie, whom Butler says was “instrumental” in connecting community members with their medals.
The ceremony occurred in Carman, and Butler says he was invited to bring his family.
“I would have estimated the crowd to be well over 100 people. It was phenomenal,” he says. “The whole ceremony was done very respectfully and very organized, and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of old friends who had been selected and given the privilege of receiving a medal.”
It was a meaningful event for Butler. He felt honoured to be included and enjoyed the pleasant camaraderie with the other recipients.
“We all have something in common for the rest of our lives,” he says.
A small group of students in London
The King Charles III Coronation Medal ceremony also echoed Butler's unforgettable experience of attending Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation 72 years ago in 1953.
He was handpicked for the special occasion.
“There was no medal that time,” he says. “That was when I was at school and there was a selection of about 20 children at our school who went up to Westminster Abbey to watch the coronation.”
The 'pride of being a former Brit'
Between coronations, Butler also received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002 (which marked 50 years since her accession to the throne) and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (commemorating 60 years) in 2012.
It all amounts to a lot for Butler.
“What it means to me is the pride of being a former Brit. I grew up with the royalty in England, and I've always been a strong monarchist. When I think back [to] the two Queen [Elizabeth II] medals that I received, as I say, the icing on the cake is to get the new coronation medal from the new monarch,” he says.
“It makes me feel like a very proud Brit and now a very proud Canadian, as I’ve been for the last 60 years.”
See the stories below for other community pillars who received a King Charles III Coronation Medal.