HAL ROGERS

Hal Rogers, 96, helped found Kinsmen Club

[Welland Tribune, September 1994]

Hal Rogers was a founder of the Kinsmen Club and received the highest honors at home and abroad.

Former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who was himself a member of the Kinsmen Club, once said Mr. Roger’s life work had been to serve Canada and he knew of no one who had done more to mobilize young people in the service of their country.

Mr. Rogers, who died Thursday (15 September 1994) at the age of 96, was made both an Officer of the Order of Canada and of the British Empire.

Considered a visionary, Mr. Rogers gathered three other young men and they started the Kinsmen Club, which has spread to 600 Canadian communities and has become the largest all-Canadian service club.

He was 21 years old, working for his father’s plumbing firm in Hamilton when he decided to start his own club after being refused membership in the Rotary Club. The Rotary, to which his father belonged, had a policy that refused membership to two people from the same firm.

Since the first meeting in 1920, Kinsmen and Kinettes have donated the equivalent of about $1 Billion in work and funds for the betterment of lives at home and abroad.

During World War II, the Kinsmen national war services committee raised millions of dollars to by powdered milk and provide food parcels for Britain. Mr. Rogers was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his leadership and the club’s war efforts.

Mr. Rogers was born in London, Ont., and had a Grade 8 education. He started work at 12, delivering parcels.

In 1916 when he was 17, he enlisted with the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders and was sent to France, where he served in the trenches for two years. He was gassed at Passchendaele in Belgium and then, in 1918, he was wounded at Amiens and was sent to England to recover.

After working with his father in Hamilton, Mr. Rogers moved to Toronto and took a job with Age Publications, which printed a plumbing trade magazine.

By 1933, in the worst of the Depression, when Mr. Rogers had become the company’s general manager, his employer ordered him to cut the wages of all the workers by 15 per cent.

At the same time, his boss said he had just bought a rowboat, canoe, motorboat and sailboat for his summer cottage and he told Mr. Rogers to pay for them out of company funds.

That was too much for Mr. Rogers. He refused to cut the salaries and was immediately fired, although his boss offered to help him find another job.

Mr. Rogers loved to tell the story of how, when he refused the offer of help, his employer asked him what he was going to do. “Go into opposition to you,” he replied.

He issued a trade directory and later came out with other publications to serve the plumbing trade. When he tried to start a magazine to serve the growing telephone industry in Ontario, he found there were 800 privately owned telephone networks in the province.

He started out to co-ordinate the directories and ended up in the business, becoming chairman of the Ontario Telephone Authority and president of the Madawaska Telephone Company and of Canadian Telephone Rentals, Ltd.

Mr. Rogers was chairman of the Forest Hill Village Board of Education from 1944 to 1951. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978.

More than a year ago, Mr. Rogers went into the veterans’ wing of Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, where he died. His wife Elspeth died in 1981.

He leaves his son, Hal, of Santa Barbara, Calif., his daughter Diane of Toronto, three grandsons Glenn, Steven and Scott, and a great grand-daughter. The funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church on St. Clair Ave. W., followed by a private burial.