Saskatchewan an Early Stronghold of Legion Support and Leadership

Once the Canadian Legion came to be, it found that its most loyal base of support was in Saskatchewan.

As the Legion began its ratification process with the national membership, Saskatchewan was the first stop on Feb. 17, 1926.

The convention opened with 128 representatives from 98 communities across the province. The majority were members of the establish Great War Veterans Association, but the Tuberculous Veterans Association, the Amputation Club, the United Services Club, the Royal Northwest Mounted Police Veterans Association and others threw their unanimous support behind the new national body and create the Canadian Legion provincial command in Saskatchewan.

James McAra, a former Lt. Col from Regina who had led the GWVA in Saskatchewan for eight years was unanimously elected president. Among the other officer elected was former Brig. Gen. Alex Ross of Yorkton who became the command's honourary treasurer and would go on to be the dominion president of the Legion from 1934-37.

In his speech to the convention, McAra encouraged delegates to work together to the Legion a success. "I cannot appeal to you too strongly to get the broad vision -- broad as our prairies, broad in the national aspect as well as broad in the particular aspect of ex-servicemen. I ask you honestly and sincerely to forget any connection you have had in the past and look to the future with a desire to accomplish the greatest good. All branches of the service, all ranks of the service, and all classes of the service should, and can, get together if they will."

In March, Manitoba followed Saskatchewan's lead in holding its first annual convention. Surprisingly, the third regional element to join the Legion was in March when a 14-member unit of the British War Veterans Association in Spokane, Wash. disbanded and re-formed as the first American-based post of the Canadian Legion.

The rest of the provincial councils ratified the Legion before the end of 1926 to establish the organization that lives on today.

Saskatchewan embraced the Legion wholeheartedly. They had the largest number of branches in the early years. The Great Depression couldn't slow the growth of the legion in Saskatchewan. In fact, Saskatchewan grew from 140 to 166 branches by the early 1930s.

The province fell on hard times during the drought years of the "hungry thirties." Provincial incomes fell by 90 per cent in two years and two-thirds of the population was on some sort of relief as the Depression hit.

The Legion filled an important role during the Great Depression. In 1929, the Saskatoon branch donated nearly $2,000 (more than $29,000 in today's dollars) for community relief and found temporary work for 38 veterans. The Regina branch put together more

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Brig. Gen Alex Ross went overseas in 1915 with the Canadian Expeditionary Force’s 28th Battalion as a Major and finished the war as Brigadier General. Saskatchewan Military Museum photo An unidentified man holds a shovel in front of a shack in Saskatchewan in 1933 during the 'Depression Days' as written on the photograph.

than 1,000 relief parcels for children in the area.

Brig. Gen. Ross would go on to play an important role as Legion president during the '30s. A provincial court judge, he initially resisted the nomination, but once he accepted the role, he took it on with gusto.

The Legion movement was waning in 1934. Some Chambers of Commerce were lobbying to no longer mark November 11th as a holiday. Meanwhile, the coffers at the Legion were short on funds. Ross proposed that they focus on strengthening their own organization. "Either we continue in the rut of legislative endeavor and live on subsidies until the people of Canada become nauseated by our importunity, or we branch out boldly into a new and wider sphere where the ex-soldier will solve his own problems and make himself responsible for the care and well-being of his comrades," Ross told the 1934 national convention as relayed in James Hale's Branching Out. "It is for us to decide now, and I am firmly of the opinion that we are at the parting of the ways and that our decision will have a far-reaching effect on the ultimate destiny of the ex-servicemen in Canada."

Ross proved correct. There was a large membership drive that came out of the national convention and renewed plans for a pilgrimage to the Vimy Memorial. Two years later 6,300 veterans make the trip by sea with another 4,000 friends and family to Vimy for the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial. It would be a testament to the power of the Legion as an organization to co-ordinate with various governments and agencies to help organize such a massive undertaking.

Under Ross' leadership, the government gives in to pressure from the Legion and recognizes the Canadian Pension Commission and establishes a royal commission to study the issue of veteran unemployment.

The Canadian Pension Commission is still one of three agencies administered under the umbrella of the Department of Veterans Affairs that is in place to provide aging veterans and their dependants with medical care and financial assistance.

A year later that royal commission recommended the establishment of the Veterans Assistance Commission to aid the more than 35,000 unemployed veterans at the height of the Great Depression. It also recommended the creation of the Corps of Commissionaires.

Today the Commissionaires remains a major source of employment for former members of the Canadian Forces.

Moose Jaw Express.com

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