badges

Canada's first veterans' organisation was the Great War Veterans, founded in 1917. By 1925 there were 15 veterans' groups in Canada. At the urging of Field-Marshal Haig, most of them amalgamated in 1925 and the Canadian Legion of the British Empire Sevice League was founded late in that year. The only veterans' organisations which did not join the new BESL were the ANV (Army and Navy Veterans, now known as the ANAF: Army, Navy, Air Force Veterans) and the Kinsmen, both of which continue to this day as community-service groups, although the Kinsmen are no longer a veterans' group owing to terms in their own constitution.

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The badges are (top) a pair of Canadian officer's shoulder-flashes from the CEF. Below are a War-time button from the Army and Navy Veterans' Fund Appeal to Aid Wives and Children of Reservists. To the right is a Great War Veterans' Asociation badge from the 1925 Winnipeg Convention at which the group voted itself out of existence to form the Legion of today.

The little crowned badge in the middle is a very early Great War Veterans' badge, before the final "A" for "Association" was fully used. Below it are (left) an early Army and Navy Veterans' badge and another from a different group, the Comrades of the Great War. A bottom is a small Canadian War-time "Beaver" button.

Janice.