Another New Year Starts

Happy New Years to everyone!

Our household quietly brought in the New Years last evening. As per normal, we had a nice bbq steak for supper yesterday evening. I was a bit worried that I would run out of propane prior to the supper being done, but the worry was for naught. I definitely will have to get the tank refilled in the not too distant future though.

We had a leisurely supper with James and Johanna and then just basically sat around shooting the breeze for a couple hours or so. Sandra fired up the boob tube and watched a bit of TV from Newfoundland and then at about 10:30 pm we hit the pillows. James and Johanna were off to do their thing and Sandra and I just retired to slumber land.

The whole town was fairly quiet last evening from what I heard. From what I gather this is the first year in quite some time that there wasn't a New Years eve dance in the hall. I guess folks just are not that interested in dancing anymore. Mind you, when I have been out walking the last couple of nights, I noticed that many many homes in town were in darkness. The folks had apparently gone away for the holidays. So I'm just not certain if it was just that the people were away or just there was no interest.

Another problem is fast approaching with people though. The local Legion has their annual curling bonspiel set to go next weekend (Jan 5-7). Of course we had to get a liquor permit, line up the food, order the liquor, etc. The one huge problem we have is that as Sunday afternoon we only had 7 or 8 teams signed up to curl. Normally this bonspiel has 20-24 teams. It would be darn hard to really have a decent bonspiel with so few teams. So now we are sitting in the spot 'do we cancel' or 'do we go ahead'?

There is a Legion meeting on Wednesday, January 3rd, and I imagine we'll have to make up our minds at that time. But of course we can't wait until then to order up the food which has to be ordered before hand. The same goes for the beer and liquor. Mind you, if we cancel at the last minute, I'm sure the hardware and the hotel will be able to reuse the liquor and beer. But for the food, we normally can't return that.

It does seem to be coming down to just a lack of interest by folks. Nobody wants to get involved or commit themselves. I believe out of the 67 or so folks in the Legion, we probably have about 10-12 that show up at meetings with any regularity. Of course the other folks still pay their dues and that certainly helps. It is just that the active members have been carrying on the branch for awhile and some members are getting tired and wanting others to assist. There just are not that many new people around that are interested in joining and assisting.

With more and more of the actual veterans passing on, there appears to be less of a reason to keep the Legion going. Hanley is not the only branch that is having problems. Legions all over the country are going through the exact same problem. In our area we have had a few Legions actually fold up over the last couple years and I'm sure we'll see more in the future.

The Legions have certainly done their bit to assist with returning vets throughout the years. We do have our members in the military serving in combat areas at present, however, even the ex-members of the Canadian Armed Forces are not signing up in the Legions. It is just a different world out there now and people are not quite as active in clubs and what not. It is a sad thing to see, but you certainly can't force people to be part of an organization and you can't force them to be active participants in the organization even if they do join.

Possibly, the Legion and other clubs have done their service to our returning veterans and it is now time to move on. Time will tell.