History
In Canada, several veterans organizations emerged during WWI. The Great War Veterans Association, founded in 1917, was the first national organization for veterans, and by 1919 it was the largest veterans organization in Canada. Following WWI, 15 different organizations existed to aid returning veterans in Canada. Field Marshal Earl Haig, founder of the British Empire Service League (now known as the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League), visited Canada in 1925 and urged the organizations to merge. In the same year, the Dominion Veterans Alliance was created to unite these organizations. In November of 1925, the Canadian Legion was founded in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as The Canadian Legion of the British Empire Services League. The Canadian Legion of the British Empire Services League was incorporated by a special act of parliament the following year. The Legion grew steadily through the 1930s and then expanded rapidly following WWII. In 1960, Queen Elizabeth II granted the Legion royal patronage and it became the Royal Canadian Legion.
Read more about this topic: Royal Canadian Legion
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)