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I join with Jim Sanders, Honorary Executive Director of the Sir Arthur Pearson Association of War Blinded (SAPA), in pointing out the significance of a remarkable new book, Veterans with a Vision: Canada’s War Blinded in Peace and War.

As a central theme, the book traces the cooperation and interaction of many of the veterans’ organizations which make up the National Council of Veteran Associations in Canada in our struggle to achieve benefits for seriously disabled veterans over the better part of the last century.

Indeed, this book is an excellent depiction of this epic battle for veterans’ benefits.

The following are some excerpts from the book, which is available for purchase through Chapters/Indigo.

SAPA and the National Council of Veteran Associations in Canada

In 1943 the Sir Arthur Pearson Association played a leading role in creating, and became a charter member of, the National Council of Veteran Associations (NCVA), a remarkable grouping still in existence (with some fifty member organizations) and still displaying strong solidarity among its participating associations.

Over the last half of the twentieth century, the NCVA was frequently successful in pressing veterans’ claims in briefs before parliamentary committees, royal commissions, the Canadian Pension Commission, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other government agencies.  SAPA formed part of a powerful lobby group.  In general, the NCVA has been successful because of the joint petitions, mutually supportive goals, and close, fraternal co-operation of its members.  Sometimes it co-operated closely with the much larger Canadian Legion, and sometimes its members stood alone in the struggle for greater veterans’ benefits.  Remarkably, given that Canada’s war blinded were few in number, two SAPA members, Edwin Baker and William Mayne, the latter a Second World War veteran, have served as chairmen of the NCVA.  “SAPA by itself could never have attained the high standard of pensions and benefits (the war blinded) now enjoy,” wrote Mayne long after the war.

Like the war blinded in most other countries, notably Germany, the Canadians refused to be submerged in larger veterans groups such as the Great War Veterans’ Association or, later, the Canadian Legion, preferring to remain a specific grouping, best able to articulate and promote their own interests.  SAPA maintained its full independence as a member of the umbrella NCVA.

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The SAPA-Amputations Association “alliance” had borne fruit in the past and, with the outbreak of the Second World War, SAPA and the War Amputations of Canada (so named since 1940) had sought to “foster a united veteran front on the Canadian war effort and on all matters affecting ex-servicemen … and their dependents.”

In the autumn of 1942, six veterans’ organizations – the Canadian Legion, the Army and Navy Veterans in Canada, the Canadian Pensioners’ Association, the Canadian Corps Association, the War Amputations of Canada, and the Sir Arthur Pearson Association of War Blinded – met to reach a consensus on how they might co-operate to further the cause of returned men.  But some rivalries persisted, especially between the Legion and the Canadian Corps Association, and, as (Edwin) Baker noted laconically, “After many weeks it was finally concluded that the Canadian Legion could not be expected to participate.”  Accordingly, in April 1943, the remaining five groups, most with long-standing friendly ties between them, formed the umbrella organization and lobby group the National Council of Veteran Associations in Canada (NCVA).

Baker was named the organization’s first chairman, and SAPA was further represented at NCVA executive meetings by its president, J. Harvey Lynes.  The NCVA’s operating principles were simple:  “no matter may be sponsored in the name of the National Council unless unanimously agreed to by the five member organizations.”  Moreover, no new veterans’ groups would be admitted to membership unless they agreed to this condition and all member groups were in favour of granting membership.  On the other hand, nothing prevented individual member groups from making separate representations to the government.

In response to a 1952 public inquiry, Baker recalled that the NCVA was formed “to promote understanding, co-operation and if possible uniformity in recommendations, proposals, and active efforts for the welfare of ex-servicemen, disabled and otherwise, in Canada.”  By then, the NCVA had grown to six member organizations.  Although Baker cited no membership figures for the Canadian Corps Association, the Canadian Paraplegics Association had about 200 members, SAPA 300, the War Amps 3,000, the Canadian Pensioners’ Association 50,000, and the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans in Canada 70,000.

One major goal of the NCVA was to “eliminate controversy” among veterans’ groups and promote co-operation and joint action.  Previous infighting, especially between the Legion and the Canadian Corps Association, occasionally had hampered the veterans’ community’s ability to forcefully negotiate with government authorities.  The NCVA was “purposefully” without bylaws or a constitution, to avoid similar internecine conflict.

The NCVA’s first order of business was to pressure Ottawa to establish a new veterans’ hospital and residence in the Toronto area to replace the aging Christie Street Hospital.  In this instance joined by other veteran and patriotic groups, including the Legion, the NCVA-led campaign proved successful.  The sod-turning ceremony for what would become Sunnybrook Hospital took place, approximately, on 11 November 1943.

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Jurisdiction over several key components of veteran-related legislation was divided among several different government departments.  The NCVA lobbied Ottawa to completely reorganize the cumbersome Department of Pensions and National Health and carve out a new department of government “exclusively the responsibility of one Minister,” which the NCVA proposed should be called the Department of War Veteran Affairs, to deal exclusively with veterans’ issues.  The Canadian Legion, too, mounted its own very strong campaign in favour of this structural change.  Again, Ottawa recognized this pressing need and responded positively to the combined veterans’ prodding:  the new Department of Veterans Affairs came into existence in October 1944.

A book was recently published which tells the remarkable story of the life and times of Daniel J. MacDonald.

Left arm missing, Left leg missing, Unfit for Service; the life and times of Daniel J. MacDonald, by John H. Brehaut, speaks of how he battled back from grievous wounds received in the Second World War to forge a remarkable career as a politician of national stature.  Behind the extraordinary political career, there is also the story of a successful farmer and devoted family man.  His story remains an inspiration to many Prince Edward Islanders and Canadians and is one that is meant to be shared.

I knew Danny best as a friend, and fellow War Amp, but also as a widely respected Member of Parliament, where he represented Canada’s war-time servicemen and women as the Minister of Veterans Affairs from 1972 until his death in September 1980.

Upon his death, I wrote an article for The War Amps Magazine summing up what he meant to veterans and Canadians in general.  Excerpts are copied below:

How is it going to be possible, in words and on paper, to convey our feelings about Danny MacDonald?  Every now and again, a man in public life dies and all of the well-deserved eulogies seem too short, no matter how very great those eulogies are, in the real sense of that word great!

There is a significant reason for this.  It happens when the man who has left us had managed, while he was here, to win a very special place in our hearts as ‘family.’  When Dan MacDonald passed away in Charlottetown on September 30th, the entire population of Prince Edward Island went into mourning.  In other parts of Canada, thousands upon thousands of Canadians – many of them veterans and their families – felt a very keen sense of personal loss.

The story is told elsewhere of the natives of P.E.I. crowding St. Dunstan’s Basilica and then lining the route of the funeral cortege as it proceeded halfway across the Province to Danny’s own church in Bothwell.  Those people whom he loved so much were paying their last respects to a man who had touched their lives, and who had offered them the one hand he had left in a gesture of friendship.  In doing so, he never spared himself.

In other parts of Canada, the feeling was no less intense.  Everywhere veterans and others were saying: “What are we going to do without him?”

Firstly, we would like to come a little closer to home.  Danny’s widow, Pauline MacDonald, was a very dear friend to The War Amps – and to all who knew her.  She took a very personal and direct interest in everything that Dan MacDonald did.  She was very, very proud of “The Honourable Dan” as well she might have been.  To Pauline and the MacDonald family, we want to extend the very sincerest sympathy – and our humble and forthright thanks for everything that he did for The War Amps, for veterans and for Canada.

Danny MacDonald came home from World War II, carrying with him the vivid memory of those who remain behind in the battlefields of Italy.  And, just to sharpen the memory, although he made light of it, his own disabilities were a constant reminder as well.  He was a tremendous man, with tremendous faith – in God, in his family, in his fellow veterans and in his country.  That faith sustained him through all that he had to endure and it is a cinch that no one ever heard him complain!  He is gone from us now but we will always remember him.  Some of us have the most cherished of memories of Danny as a friend and all of us will know that this was a better place because of Dan MacDonald and all he did and all he stood for.

This inspirational book can be purchased at Chapters/Indigo, through the publisher’s Web site at www.jhbrehautpublishing.com or by contacting publisher John Brehaut directly at jhbrehaut@pei.sympatico.ca, by phone at (902) 569-3758, or by mail at 1128 Pownal Road, Alexandra, Charlottetown RR 1, PEI, C1A 7J6.

Tomorrow, May 8th, marks the 65th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day. 

On the occasions where I’ve returned to Holland, I’ve always been touched by the warmth and gratitude of the Dutch people.  It is not just the officials, but little children with flags in their hands line the streets.  Dutch students adopt the graves of the war dead and decorate them with flowers.

The Dutch people were starving during the war because the Germans had commandeered their food supplies.  We weren’t only freeing them from the Germans, we were also saving their lives. 

I guess that’s why there is sort of a love affair between our two countries.  It’s very emotional for our guys.

When you go to the cemeteries, it all strikes you as a terrible loss.  It surprises me to see the ages on the grave markers. 

For those who have not been able to visit the graves personally, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Web site offers a glimpse of the records of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and never returned home to their loved ones. 

The “Debt of Honour Register” is the CWGC’s database listing of the 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died during the two World Wars.  It also provides information on the 23,000 cemeteries, memorials and other locations worldwide where they are commemorated.

In addition to searching for records of soldiers, the register can also be searched for details of the 67,000 Commonwealth civilians who died as a result of enemy action in the Second World War.

The following is information from the CWGC Web site:

Together with the tasks of structural and horticultural maintenance, the Commission is charged with keeping records of the 1.75 million Commonwealth war dead. At each cemetery and memorial you will find a register showing the service details and, in some cases, family details, of the men and women buried or commemorated there.

From the start, records of cemeteries and the people buried therein were kept. As the war progressed, so did the work of the Records Department. By October 1915, over 31,000 graves had been registered and by May 1916, over 50,000 registrations had been made, with some of the costliest battles (in terms of lives lost) still to be fought.

Following the end of the war, the Commission began work on the construction of the cemeteries as we know them today. Small cemeteries were concentrated into larger ones, the battlefields were searched for bodies and some cemeteries were re-ordered. Records were kept for each casualty, detailing where he was found and the cemetery to which he was moved. Based on these records, headstones were ordered and produced.

The records were also used to produce the lists of names of those servicemen with no known grave, which were later engraved on the memorials to the missing. 

By the end of the war, 580,000 identified graves and 180,000 unidentified graves had been marked and recorded. Commemorations on memorials totalled 530,000.

At the start of the Second World War, the Records Department was once again called into action. Similar records and procedures as had been carried out only a few years before were once again used. By 1947, 370,000 graves were recorded and 250,000 names commemorated on memorials. In addition, Winston Churchill asked the Commission to keep a roll of Commonwealth civilian war dead. This roll of 67,000 men, women and children is now held near St George’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.