Ultimate Scouter reflects on International Volunteer Day

Seven decades of service

Soaring up high in British skies, locked in vicious dog fights against snarling Messerschmitts, an 18-year-old kid named Alan Griffin clung to his life – and the throttle of his Hawker Hurricane – while watching friends all around him lose theirs.

It was the Battle of Britain, a defining moment of the Second World War, and “Griff,” as he was called, was learning the most valuable lesson of his life.

The buddy system.

“They taught us to look after each other.”

Sitting in the museum he started inside Scouts Canada’s national headquarters in Nepean, Griffin reflects how well that simple lesson has served him in war, peace, and 70 years of volunteering with the organization.

It’s something the 89-year-old has strived to pass on – not only as a father and grandfather, but also as a highly-decorated Scout leader who has worked with youth of every age.

Griffin is among the countless volunteers around the globe whose efforts were recognized on Dec. 5, with International Volunteer Day, a United Nations-sanctioned event.

He has been involved in the Scouting movement since 1929, when he joined the Cubs at age six in his hometown of Leicester, U.K.

Though he has earned practically every honour Scouting can bestow – from the sewing badge on up – the latest, in his eyes, is by far the greatest.

In a surprise ceremony held Nov. 24, a crowd of Griffin’s Scouting comrades, past and present, came together at the Nepean headquarters to recognize his 70 years of volunteer service to the organization.

In addition, he learned that a fund had been set up in his name – the Alan Griffin Spirit of Scouting Fund – that will give financial help to young people who can’t afford to join Scouting without it.

But perhaps Griffin’s greatest surprise that day was seeing a Scouter who made the trip from Toronto with two kids of his own troop just to see the ceremony. Once upon a time, Griffin mentored the man when he himself just a kid.

For Griffin, it was a reminder of the less tangible rewards of a life spent in dedication to a cause.

These days, with the help of a few other volunteers, Griff minds the Scouting museum he started seven years ago inside the movement’s national headquarters.

Sorting through Scouting treasures is a treat in itself, he said, but nothing is sweeter than showing the young people who visit artifacts of the movement’s past.

The value of volunteering in an organization likes Scouts Canada, he said, is just that: the opportunity to pass something on.

It’s something he learned from the movement’s founder, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, a man Griffin met several times, fondly remembering the way he connected to the movement’s youth, “on our level.”

Says Griffin, his finger jabbing the air for emphasis: “What you instill in the next generation will take you further.”

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