One of the first things I discovered about rural Saskatchewan was the strength of Legion branches in the province and the prominent physical presence occupied in the communities by the Legion halls.
To the Legion members, as to many community members, one of the most important uses of the Legion Hall is for the annual Remembrance Day service.
For most of us, once Nov. 11 is over, we put aside the remembering for another 365 days.
For most of us, there are no memories and nothing tangible to help us remember in between.
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One Legion branch in Saskatoon has decided this should not be so and has created a museum of military artifacts.
The artifact room which the Nutana Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion has established is a treasure trove of memorabilia. The evening I visited, along with several other invited guests, our exploration of the collection was made to the background music of Vera Lynn, appropriate not only because of her role as a wartime songstress but also because one of the items on display is a wreath laid by Miss Lynn in Saskatoon on Nov. 11, 1984.
There are several military uniforms in the collection, men’s and women’s, including a sailor’s whites, which I never realized were made of such heavy material.
And yes, according to our tour guide, sailors did sleep with the pants of their whites beneath their mattresses to preserve the crease.
There are medals and buttons, dishes, guns, pictures, a collection of music from the Second World War era, field dressings, bayonets, gas masks, POW dogtags and a small library of books and videos about military history and related topics.
There is always one item in a collection which particularly catches the fancy. For me it was an unopened First World War emergency rations tin to be used “only when rations of no other kind are procurable.” It was “not to be opened except by order of an officer.”
No officer being readily available at the time and fresher rations at hand, we returned the tin to the shelf.
Visiting the artifact room gave me, born too late to remember the war, a real sense of what it was like to wear the uniform and to serve the country.
It does not glorify war nor does it go overboard on the theme of sacrifice.
In the words of the present generation, it “tells it like it was.”
