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Our View: Lend a hand in Langley for the vets

The local poppy campaign needs volunteers.
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Langley’s poppy campaigns will be a little different this year.

Langley City is without a Royal Canadian Legion branch for the first time in decades. And Aldergrove, Cloverdale, and other nearby legions simply don’t have the volunteers and members to take up the slack.

So, to raise money for Canadian veterans, Wilma McEwan is again organizing a poppy campaign. She’s been running the campaign for the Langley legion for years, and has turned it into one of the top fundraisers in the country.

Now she’ll have to do that without the machinery of the local legion backing her up.

The money raised from the annual campaigns goes towards helping veterans.

With many veterans of the Second World War and Korea in their 80s and 90s, a great deal of the funding goes towards seniors homes and medical facilities that serve veterans.

In addition, the money goes towards Canada’s more recent veterans. Thousands of Canadians served overseas in Afghanistan, and hundreds more have been everywhere from the former Yugoslavia to Haiti, from East Timor to the Sudan over the past few decades.

Many served and came back fine, but others were wounded, physically or psychologically. Every donation that earns a poppy on a lapel goes towards efforts – local efforts – to help Canadian veterans who are in need.

The campaign will be based out of the former legion branch at 20681 56th Ave., and you can contact McEwan at 236-887-2098.

– M.C.