With Remembrance Day just around the corner, the Royal Canadian Legion’s annual poppy campaign will be collecting funds to support local veterans.
Throughout today and Saturday, volunteers will distribute poppies and donation boxes to businesses throughout the community — with all collected funds going to serving veterans in need.
“The Legion’s main responsibility, one of the biggest responsibilities, is supporting veterans, and the poppy campaign and poppy money is 100 per cent for veterans,” said Rick Purcell, president of Branch 34 in Orillia. “We don’t use one cent of it in Legion operations.”
Whether it’s helping veterans with medical expenses, like hearing aids or wheelchairs, or otherwise supporting those who fought for Canada, the funds directly support veterans in the community, he stressed.
“World War 2 veterans, (for) some of them, their incomes, their pensions are low, so they have difficulty sometimes with big-ticket medical expenses,” Purcell said. “The poppy campaign can pay for that.”
Should funds remain at the end of the year, Purcell said the poppy campaign also helps with provincial programs meant to assist veterans.
“At our year end in April, if there’s money left, we can write cheques to the hospital foundation, Leave the Streets Behind, or any of the foundations at the Province of Ontario, and that money all goes to support veterans as well, and big-ticket stuff — they can pay for a veteran going into a hospital,” he said.
The poppy campaign will collect donations throughout the week leading up to Remembrance Day.
