Good morning, fellow HKVCA members, and a special “bonjour” to the Veterans! It’s great to be here in the province of Quebec, the home of so many of the young men who left for Hong Kong in 1941.
Un grand “merci” ŕ Lucette et toute son équipe, qui ont travaillé dur pour rendre succčs ŕ cet évčnement. A big “thank you” to Lucette and her team, who have worked hard to make this event a success.
Since our last convention in Ottawa two years ago, 5 Veterans living in Ontario have passed away. We will remember them.
I thought you might be interested in our how our membership is made up in Ontario. As you can see here, the number of Veterans and Widows is declining, but we have added “regular” members over the last two years, to the tune of about 10%. This is encouraging, since generally speaking, once a Veteran passes away his family members often drop out of the HKVCA. It’s also interesting to note that just over 10% of our members in Ontario are grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Veterans. Frankly, I don’t know how this compares to other regions, so I’m not sure whether I should be happy about it, or wish for a higher number! But it is encouraging to see the 3rd and 4th generation being involved. Obviously, as time passes, we need to continue to enlist these young people into the association, or else we will see our membership numbers drop off.
Every organization has a mission and a set of priorities. You already know the HKVCA’s mission: “to educate all Canadians on the role of Canada's soldiers in the Battle of Hong Kong and on the effects of the internment of the battle’s survivors on both the soldiers and their families. We also assist in the support and welfare of Hong Kong veterans and their widows.” In Ontario we try to ensure that every activity we engage in supports the mission statement. This results in our three priorities: Education, Commemoration, and Well-being of Veterans and Widows.
You’re going to hear a lot more about Education in a few minutes, as Pat Turcotte tells you about what’s being done across Canada. If the story of the Battle of Hong Kong is to survive beyond the passing of the last Veteran, we must ensure that it is taught in schools. I’m pleased to say that about 80% of our efforts in Ontario are directed to education, and have been for some time. And not only are we devoting effort, but since the last convention we have spent nearly $9,000 of our own regional funds, about half of which was of benefit to the rest of the regions across the country. For example, we revised the successful CD-ROM presentation I described to you at the last convention, and made 1,000 more copies of it. We awarded $1,500 in prizes for the Cross-Canada Writing Contest over two years. We paid to have a number of the Veteran’s personal accounts of their experiences during the war translated into French, at a cost of $2,500. We believe in education, and we’re pushing as hard as we can to produce teaching materials, and to get them into the hands of teachers.
The mother tongue of nearly 25% of Canada’s population is French. And let’s not forget that a sizeable proportion of the men who fought in Hong Kong were French-speaking! Some of our materials and our web site are in French, but not nearly enough to satisfy Canada’s French-speakers. To be fully effective in reaching into schools, we need to translate most of our materials, and to have a web site that welcomes francophones. We’ve done a lot of good work, but we still have much to do.
To get our materials into teachers’ hands, we make presentations and do displays at teacher conferences. For example, we’ve been at the Parliamentary Library’s Teacher Resource Fair in Ottawa twice since the last convention, which the government funds teachers from across Canada to attend. We’ve presented and run booths at the Ontario History and Social Sciences Teachers’ Association conference, at which several hundred history teachers from across Ontario attend. And we’ve made many presentations to schools and classes.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Jim Trick and Earl Gyselman, who operate the HKVCA’s web site. They’ve done a terrific job of providing a home for all of our educational materials, making them easily accessible to students, teachers and other members of the public.
You may have seen our three banners at the Education Exhibit in Salon 5. One of our members, Bud Mann, spent a great deal of his time to put these together and have them made. They’ve been a great success, and we’ve made the artwork available to the other regions.
Another excellent event was a panel discussion at the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library at the University of Toronto in March. There were a half-dozen panelists, including Veteran George MacDonell, Manitoba’s own Vince Lopata and Nathan Greenfield, author of “The Damned”. Over 100 were in attendance, and the feedback was uniformly positive.
In terms of Commemoration, perhaps our biggest event was the trip to Hong Kong and Japan which we organized and conducted last December. Fifty-two HKVCA members and their families, including three Veterans, made this two week commemorative trip. The feedback was extremely positive. And by the way, I plan to travel again to Hong Kong this December to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration at Sai Wan War Cemetery. I’m not going to organize anything this time, but if anyone is interested in making the trip at the same time, I’ll be happy to let you know what my plans are.
We were very pleased that one of our Veterans, Ken Pifher, was honoured at the Canadian International Military Tattoo in June. On behalf of all Hong Kong Veterans, Ken received a standing ovation from the several thousand people in the audience. We also had a display at the Tattoo, which garnered a good deal of interest.
We also help others to commemorate. Last August, some of us attended a ceremony and luncheon held by the August 15, 1945 Association. This is a group of Dutch-heritage people who commemorate the capture and imprisonment by the Japanese of entire families in various countries in Southeast Asia that at the time were Dutch colonies or had large Dutch populations. Some of their stories are equally as horrific as those told by our Veterans.
And we participated in the Foundation Day dinner held by the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) Association, which has a branch in Toronto. George MacDonell was a guest of honour. You’ll recall that the Volunteers fought side by side with the Canadians and other defenders of Hong Kong.
I’m glad to say that most of the heavy lifting in terms of the well-being of our Veterans and Widows is done by Veterans Affairs, and of course by their families. But we do stay in contact with them periodically through our six Area Reps, who phone them and organize the occasional luncheon. I think the Veterans and Widows appreciate the contact.
I’d like to close by making an appeal. Clearly, education is a big part of what we do in Ontario. I hope that you agree with its importance to maintaining the memory of our Veterans and their exploits and sacrifices for their country. If you do, then I encourage you to get involved in your own region - whether Ontario or another one - to help take the Hong Kong story into schools and other places where Canadians can learn about this important, but lesser known part of their history.
I also encourage you to bring in the next generation of members … the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Veterans. If you don’t do this, our organization will dwindle to the point where there aren’t enough of us to carry out our important work.
And finally, get involved! If you’re not already doing so, please volunteer to help with some part, no matter how small, of the work we do. We owe it to the Veterans!
Thanks for your attention, and enjoy the rest of the conference.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Babin
Regional Director, Ontario