The Legions are an interesting group because they can be quite fractured. The local Legion branch may not know what's going on at the provincial command or Dominion Command, but you may have a really active secretary or somebody who works in that particular branch number who does just about everything.
From a local level, we're connecting with those individuals as much as we can. We have great relationships with Dominion Command here in Ottawa, with past and current presidents and all of the executive branch. We have regular conversations or correspondence with different provincial commands. We find that's where we've had the best success with information getting down to the local branches in each of those provinces, whether it's through an e-mail blast, a newsletter, or regular meetings.
Whenever we put an event together and blast it out to an invitation list, the first people we go to are the Legions. The first phone call we make is to our Legions, and we say that we are--as they may not know--the official in-school speakers' bureau of the Royal Canadian Legion. They probably know who we are through different ways. We tell them we're going to be holding an event and we'd love their Legion to be represented either by speaking there or at least by providing some information to their members to come and attend. The Legion, over the years, has been a great way for us to send our message out.
If we get a couple of very interested Legion members, the message goes to their meeting—which we hope happens kind of the day after we contact them or the day before the event—and takes advantage of that, and then hopefully that gives them some sort of opportunity to provide some information at the event itself.
It's hard when Legions are closing and the membership is really decreasing. The form the Legion took 50 or 60 years ago is much different now, and I think that as much as we can hold on to the relationships we have with different Legions from a provincial standpoint, the local ones would also help us. We need to keep an eye on that as well.