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Canadian historian Glenn T. Wright described the Royal Canadian Legion as a non-profit, national organization serving war veterans, their families, as well as lobbying the government on their behalf. The Royal Canadian Legion is known for selling poppies every fall and organizing Remembrance Day ceremonies across Canada.

This year, Remembrance Day ceremonies will be limited in Canada and other Commonwealth countries because of COVID-19. In Assiniboia, the services will be held outside at the cenotaph at the Asaskan Complex (Town Hall) on Nov. 11 instead of St. George’s Parish Hall, where the ceremony is traditionally held.  

Participants are asked to remain in their cars as a group of volunteers hold Assiniboia’s 2020 Remembrance Day service outside at the cenotaph beginning at 10:30-10:45 a.m.

Because of COVID-19 and social distancing, there won’t be wreath-laying ceremonies this year in Assiniboia and the rest of the country. Instead, wreaths must be laid either at the beginning of the ceremony in town, or the wreaths will be placed at the cenotaph after the ceremony ends.

Remembrance Day in Assiniboia is an important day regardless of the pandemic, especially with the presence of war veterans throughout the town’s history. Assiniboia’s branch of the Royal Canadian Legion – an organization with distinguished roots in Â鶹´«Ã½AV Central Saskatchewan – has played a visible role in town since the Roaring Twenties.

Although Assiniboia’s Legion has moved to several different meeting places since the beginning, the organization has continued to survive from the 1920s to 2020. The Great War Veterans Association of Assiniboia and District met in the Town Council Chambers at the Assiniboia Town Hall in February 1926 for a meeting called to order by G. Darby. After the meeting concluded, the group changed their names to Assiniboia Branch of the Canadian Legion – with the word Royal added much later after Queen Elizabeth II gave her consent on December 19, 1960.

The first Canadian Legion meetings were held in different areas throughout Assiniboia until 1934, when a hall was rented by T.G. Ross above one of the town’s earliest liquor stores on Lots 11-12 and Block 16. Later, the building was demolished then turned into a parking lot. The first Legion hall in Assiniboia had chairs, tables, a sofa and a rug and cost $5 per month. Local historians recorded a small act of kindness in July 1934, when the Legion sent $1 to the Legion in Golden, British Columbia, who were undergoing financial problems.

When Assiniboia’s Legion experienced financial issues of their own in August 1938, they left the hall and moved back to the Town Council Chambers to hold regular meetings.

The Legion moved again in January 1940, when they started meeting at the Elks Hall for $7.50 per month.

The Legion began fundraising for a building in June 1940 – by January 1941, the building fund established by the Legion had grown to $171.29. After the Second World War, the Legion purchased a building from the Mossbank Airport, which opened as a hall in September 1946. Teenagers used the hall in one night per month, free of charge.

The Legion began constructing a new hall with volunteer labour in March 1956. Fifteen to 20 men assembled to help lift the arches for Assiniboia’s new Legion Hall with ropes, props and other improvised gear. The volunteers raised the first arch without any difficulties, but when they tried to raise the second arch, trouble kicked-in as the arch slipped off the foundation, crashed to the ground and split into halves.

Thankfully, nobody was hurt during this episode, but the building’s subfloor suffered damages from the arch’s weighty and forceful drop.  

Despite this initial setback, the Canadian Legion building opened in June 1958. Royal Canadian Legion Branch 17 in Assiniboia will survive the pandemic, because they have crushed barriers before. Although COVID-19 has affected the Legion's agenda this year, Assiniboia’s branch of the Royal Canadian Legion will continue to hold meetings at their most contemporary spot in Club 55 on 102 Third Avenue West long after the pandemic has ended.   

(Information obtained from Heritage '85, p. 48-50).