Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 26/02) - Elks Club members from all across the country will be painting the town purple this weekend.

The Elks of Canada have existed for almost a century, but this year marks the first time the national body is coming to Yellowknife.

The 2002 Elks' and Royal Purple National Convention are expecting almost 500 members to attend, including its sister organization, the Ladies of the Royal Purple, starting Saturday and wrapping up July 31.

What makes the event all the more special for local lodge members is that Roland Gagnon, the Grand Leading Knight of Elks of Canada -- equivalent to first-vice president -- is widely expected to be nominated to become Grand Exalted Ruler.

"It's one of the main reason why we are having this convention," said Dave Hurley, the Yellowknife Elks' Lodge manager. "We've never had anybody at that level before."

For his part, Gagnon wanted to wait until the nomination process was over before discussing his likely promotion to the organization's highest seat, but was willing to embark on a discussion of it's history.

The Elks of Canada started in North Vancouver in 1912 after three Elks members from the United States immigrated and decided they wanted to start a chapter there. It quickly grew, and lodges began popping up all across the country.

"As the train whistle stopped you'd often start another lodge," said Gagnon, who has been a member of the Yellowknife chapter for 39 years.

Today there are 350 Elks lodges throughout Canada, and more than 17,000 members. Membership at one time peaked upwards of 50,000 Canadians. Yellowknife's chapter was started Aug. 18, 1948. Another Elks lodge was also established in Hay River.

"There was 62 people I think at the time that decided to have an Elks Lodge," said Gagnon. "They got a charter and they've been doing it ever since."

The name "Elks" dates back to 1865 in the U.S. It stands for equality, love, kindness, and service.

Their penchant for the colour purple, however, is a bit more of a mystery.

"It's just a colour that was picked back in Timbuktu time," says Gagnon. "I really don't know the answer to that."

It's all for charity

Above all, the Elks main commitment is to charity. Since 1995, the Yellowknife Elks chapter alone has raised approximately $3 million for various community projects.

"We've given out an awful lot of money over the years," says Gagnon. "The big cheques, we've given a $100,000 to the Baker Centre, $50,000 to the Side Door (Youth Centre). We do a lot of community work."

It is still a highly ritualized organization, although Gagnon said no onus is placed on religious, political or personal beliefs. We're fairly big into ritual, ritualistic type of stuff," says Gagnon. "Some people like it and some people don't necessarily like it, the same as your purple hat and your funny pants and all that type of stuff. It's not mandatory, you don't have to wear it if you don't want to.

"You apply for the lodge and you get voted on, and you go through the initiation ceremony, and you're an Elks lodge member."

The Elks of Canada have gone through many changes over the years. Other clubs, such as Kiwanis, and the Lions Club were established. Membership has been declining since the mid-1980s, though Gagnon says their numbers appear to be stabilizing. But these are different times.

"There's more things for you to do now," says Gagnon. "In the '30s, '50s, and '60s, even the '70s, there wasn't a heck of a lot to do. 'What do you want to do? We got to get involved in some organization.

"Nowadays, there's TV... It's a different generation. In my generation the men did something and the women did something. While maybe your generation is a little different."

In 1997, the Elks of Canada initiated a Gallop poll to see if its members would be willing to allow women to join after their U.S. counterparts were sued for excluding women. The Elks voted in favour of allowing women to join, and these days there are close to a 1,000 female lodge members in Canada, not including the Ladies of the Royal Purple. Despite the changes in recent years, Gagnon says the Elks remain an integral part of his life, as it does for many others.

"It's the satisfaction of helping people, in a nutshell," says Gagnon.