BY ROBYN YOUNG
The Daily News
Sitting in his wheelchair in the courtyard of the Camp Hill Veteran’s Memorial Hospital Sunday, Geoffrey Ellwood humbly displayed a row of eight shiny medals across the breast of his jacket.
“If you keep breathing, they keep giving you medals,” the 86-year-old joked in a quiet voice.
Ellwood was in the Canadian army for 38 years and served in the Korean War.
Although not a resident of the Camp Hill hospital, he’s certainly a veteran and joined Sunday's party to help celebrate the hospital’s 90th anniversary.
Minister of Veterans Affairs, Greg Thompson, attended the event at the hospital on Veterans Memorial Drive, and spoke to some of the 175 veterans who call the building home, and their families.
“Camp Hill has been providing care and services to Canada’s war Veterans since 1917 – with an impressive record of service for high quality care,” he told a couple of hundred people gathered in the courtyard.
In 1917, the hospital served First World War Veterans as well as more than 1,200 victims of the Halifax explosion, he said.
“We still hear stories today of how our convalescing war Veterans gave up their beds and stretchers to the hundreds of injured and dying civilians,” Thompson added.
After the speech, Elsie Rolls, director of veterans services at Camp Hill and Howard Parker, president of the Camp Hill Veteran’s Council, cut the cake and posed for photos as a brass band played cheerful ragtime tunes.
Parker, who has been a resident at the hospital for about two years, said Camp Hill has one of the best reputations in the country as a veteran’s hospital.
“It’s well deserved,” he said.
“They treat us very, very well.”
Sunday's event also marked the 20th anniversary of the Camp Hill Veterans’ Memorial Building, which Minister Thompson said is the largest and most recognized Veteran’s facility in Atlantic Canada.
The commemoration of what is considered the turning point of the Second World War, The Battle of Brittain, also took place Sunday.
More than 500 pilots went missing or were killed during the battle 67 years ago, after nearly 3,000 pilots took to the skies to fight a looming Nazi invasion of England.
A flypast and parade marked the anniversary Sunday morning in Dartmouth.
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