Over 100 years ago, the Royal Canadian Legion Branch #60 was established in Estevan. It's a lot of time to support veterans and charitable organizations in the city. National Legion Week aims to commemorate the work Legion branches throughout the country do for Canada's servicemen and women, as well as the impacts they've made in their local communities.
"Well, of course, our primary job as the Legion is to ensure that our veterans and their families are taken care of if they're in need. Then, we donate a lot of money to the hospital, the addiction centre, the long-term care. We donated $10,000 to the MRI project, various nursing homes, Creighton Lodge, and just a lot of stuff in town that we try to support every year," shared Frosty Forest, president of the branch.
Forest admits that membership has taken a hit over the years due to the aging group and non-renewals after COVID.
"We are an aging group. Our membership has dropped considerably over the last number of years. Some of our older members are passing on and throughout COVID, we had a lot of people not renew memberships. We still have a lot of non-renewals. So it's a scramble to have membership so you can keep operating and do all the things we want to do."
Part of the National Legion Week campaign from the Royal Canadian Legion is to educate the public as to how important the local branch is. This weekend, the Estevan branch will be holding an open house for the community to garner more memberships and add more volunteers.
"We're going to have a free barbecue. We're going to have tables set up and information on what the Legion does or what we have available for all of our hall rental banquets and so on. Our club room will be open to have a look at what what we do there. We have some great pool tables. We'll just let people that have never been to the Legion have an opportunity to have a look around the Southeast Military Museum in there. We'll have guided tours as well. So it's it's going to be a big deal for us and we're looking forward to it," added Forest.
The open house for the Legion will be on Saturday, September 21.