After some 25 years of service with the Elmira Legion, Gordon Moore is now ready to represent the branch on a national level: he was recently selected to serve as Dominion first vice-president of The Royal Canadian Legion. His election to the Legion’s top executive council came at the 43rd Dominion Convention in Winnipeg.
Moore joined the Canadian Army in 1969, serving with the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, stationed in Fort Osborne, Winnipeg for three years.
He has been a member of the Elmira Branch 469 since 1985. He served on the branch executive and all its committees, including a stint as the poppy committee chairman. He became branch president in 1989. By the time he finishes his term as vice-president and then president, in 2016, he will have dedicated 30 years to the Legion and its causes.
“I started a number of years ago and I haven’t looked back since,” said Moore. “This new role is an exciting one. To be supported by the other delegates and the 350,000 members they represent was a very humbling thing to happen. I am still on cloud nine.”
Alongside his Legion work, he has been an avid volunteer and has worked with minor soccer and junior and senior softball leagues. He has also volunteered with the Children’s Wish Foundation. For the past 32 years he has been employed in sales and marketing and is currently employed with Tri-City Equipment as its marketing and sales manager.
His new role will have him chairing two committees and sitting on a number of others. He will focus much of his time on two main areas: increasing membership and developing more Remembrance programs in schools.
“Membership over the past number of years is way down,” he explained. “People often think of the Legion as just an old boys’ club where people drink beer and play bingo, but it’s not. We do so many community programs and are involved with so many groups.”
And more importantly, his focus with his new role will be to take care of the members of the Legion, war veterans and their families.
“Not necessarily just the traditional veterans from the Second World War and the Korean War, but also now our modern day veteran, who is serving in Afghanistan, Bosnia,” said Moore. “We have to be there for them and that is going to be our major focus.”
Moore himself lost three out of nine family members who served in the Second World War.
“If you think about war veterans back in their era – it’s basically the same thing that these men and women are facing today,” said Moore. “Remembrance is taking on a whole new meaning for our younger generation.”
Going forward, he hopes to move up the ranks even further, eventually becoming president of Dominion Command. To celebrate his new position, the Elmira Legion is holding an open house for Moore July 19 starting at 1 p.m.
