MOUNT FOREST – Derek Moore wants to help move the Royal Canadian Legion into the 21st century.
The Legion, he said, is too bogged down by unnecessary bylaws – and like other organizations across the country, finding dedicated volunteers is a struggle.
Moore joined the Legion 48 years ago, at a time when veterans of the Second World War still filled the small rooms of Mount Forest Legion Branch 134 with cigarette smoke and war stories.
“I enjoyed the veterans, it just made me want to do this job even more, and they encouraged me to,” Moore said.
The branch’s membership today is more likely to talk sports than combat.
“Now it’s a struggle just to get people to come in,” Moore said.
He added he believes the number of people willing to volunteer is declining.
The Legion offers much to veterans and the community, he said, raising funds through volunteer-led and supported events to bolster local community groups and organizations such as the Mount Forest 895 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron.
To anyone saying there’s nothing for them at the Legion, Moore’s not buying it. Members have access to hall rentals and space where they can start up programming and make things happen for the community, he said.
Moore isn’t a veteran, but his father, Russell, served as a ground crew member with the Royal Canadian Airforce 419 Bomber Squadron that entered Europe in 1942, and later with a reconnaissance unit.
Moore immigrated to Canada from England in 1978, volunteering with the Mount Forest branch and moving up through its ranks. He worked at a produce manager at a grocery store, as a school custodian, and later served an extended term as the Legion’s Ontario Command president in between shifts driving a student transport van.
Typically a two-year term, he served as president for three years due to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
His focus during that time was the Legion’s homeless veterans program, known as “Leave the Streets Behind,” which Moore said has helped 1,300 formerly homeless veterans with permanent or temporary housing.
He lauded an annual ruck march that sees participants, wearing ruck sacks, trek two kilometres for each first responder or veteran who died the previous year.
This year’s 142-km march began Sept. 11 in Windsor. Moore was there for the start and planned to be at the finish line in Chatham last Sunday.
He said the march has raised $2 million for the homeless program since it began in 2010.
“I think it’s the best thing we do, that’s what we’re here for, we’re here for the veterans,” Moore said. “These guys deserve better.”
Former Ontario Command vice president Lynn McClellan, elected provincial president in May, said he’s going to keep Moore “as involved as possible” on the homelessness file.
“That was really an area that he really paid a lot of attention to during his term, and tried to better it, and it has been very, very successful over the past several years, but he’s certainly had a lot to add to it and will so this next term as well,” McClellan told the Advertiser.
Moore has returned to the Mount Forest branch’s executive committee and chairs the Legion’s provincial property committee, overseeing 389 buildings.
The Legion has offered Moore rare lifetime experiences.
He has pinned a poppy on lieutenant governor Edith Dumont, launching the national Poppy Campaign in 2023. And last year, Moore, and wife Trish, a 25-year Legion member, marched in a procession and laid a wreath for the Return of the Unknown Solider, a repatriation of an unknown soldier’s remains from France to Newfoundland.
“I’m very into that kind of pomp and pageantry and I get a real charge out of that, for being part of that,” Moore remarked.
In 2026, the Legion turns 100, and members will convene in Winnipeg – where the modern-day Royal Canadian Legion began – to mark the centennial.
It’s there Moore hopes to be voted in as dominion vice president, a role that would provide a national reach.
He’s a true believer in what the Legion offers – “I tell everybody that I’m a Legion member” – but acknowledged change is needed.
“I think we need to change and move into the 21st century,” he said.
And “real changes come at the top,” he added, saying he would have more influence on programming at the Dominion level.
“I’d like to be a part of the future of the Legion,” Moore said.
“I’m not going to stop now.”
