Five members of the St. Albert Royal Canadian Legion have received honours from the King in recognition of their service to Canada.
St. Albert-Edmonton MP Michael Cooper awarded the King Charles III’s Coronation Medal to St. Albert Legion members John “Tim” Penney, Richard Garwood, Rhonda Egar-Lee, and Robert Fagan at the Legion’s annual veterans' dinner on Feb. 23. He also gave Legion member Gerry Vercammen a King Charles III coronation pin.
The medals were among some 30,000 such honours set to be distributed in Canada to mark the coronation of King Charles III as King of Canada. Eligible candidates were people who made significant contributions to Canada that were alive on May 6, 2023 (the date of the coronation).
Dedicated volunteers
Penney served 35 years with Canada’s military in theatres such as Cyprus, Croatia, Yugoslavia, and Kosovo, before retiring with the rank of captain. He has been president of the St. Albert Legion for three years and commands the colour (flag) party during St. Albert’s Remembrance Day ceremonies.
Despite coming from a military family, Penney said he originally trained to be a bricklayer coming out of high school. That changed when he drove a friend to the local army recruitment office.
“The recruiter looked at me and said, ‘What about you?’” Penney recalled, and he decided to give soldiering a shot.
“And I never regretted a day of it!”
After retiring in 2014 and coming to St. Albert, Penney said he was recruited into the St. Albert Legion by longtime member Doug Delorme. He co-chaired the branch’s poppy campaign for eight years, raising some $600,000 in the process. More recently, he started a weekly Veteran’s Coffee event to try and bring more young veterans into the Legion.
“I’ll do everything I can to help our veterans,” he said.
Fagan served 30 years with Canada’s military and has been a Legion member for 53 years. He teamed up with W.D. Cuts students in 2014 to bring the No Stone Left Alone event to the St. Albert Municipal Cemetery. The event now sees hundreds of students and veterans lay poppies atop every military grave in the cemetery each November in an act of remembrance.
Egar-Lee said her link to the Legion started when she was five. Her grandfather, who fought for Canada at Juno Beach during the Second World War, had died, and the family couldn’t afford a tombstone for him. Hearing this, Legion officials stepped in to fund one for him.
“That was always a piece that I always carried around with me,” she said, so when she grew up, she knew she wanted to volunteer for the Legion.
Egar-Lee has since organized many fundraisers for the St. Albert Legion, including its summer beer gardens, which raised some $50,000 for the group last year alone.
Garwood was recognized for his 48 years of public service as an army cadet, soldier, police officer, and St. Albert volunteer. Vercammen was cited for his thousands of hours of volunteer work with the Legion, International Police Association, Volkssport Association, and other groups.
Retired St. Albert soldier Bill Dickson received the coronation medal at the Legion last January. Cooper was expected to award the medal to 18 St. Albert residents (and to re-award it to Egar-Lee and Fagan) at the St. Albert Inn on March 1.
Visit bit.ly/43b2DpT for more on the medals.
