Calgary students lay poppies on 4,400 veterans' headstones at Burnsland Cemetery
Hundreds of junior high students placed poppies on the headstones of about 4,400 veterans, reading each name aloud ahead of Remembrance Day.
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No stone was left alone at Burnsland Cemetery on Friday, as more than 300 Grade 7 and 9 students from three Calgary Catholic junior high schools placed poppies on the headstones of roughly 4,400 veterans buried in the city's largest military Field of Honour.
The day opened with speeches from veterans and members of the military, the playing of the Last Post, two minutes of silence and wreaths laid at the Burnsland Cemetery Cross of Sacrifice. Then the students spread out to lay poppies and read each fallen veteran's name aloud.
The event is run by the No Stone Left Alone Memorial Foundation, an Edmonton-based non-profit that teaches Canadian youth about those who served in the Armed Forces. It followed a similar ceremony at Edmonton's Beechmount Cemetery on Thursday.
"You talk about battles, you talk about 150,000 Canadians killed, but it doesn't really relate to a 15 or 16-year-old kid," said Steven Graham, a Canadian Army veteran who organizes the Calgary event each year. "But when they look at a headstone, see a name, an age, a date of when they died, and in a lot of cases, the age is not dissimilar from their own, that's when it really hits home."
Founder Maureen Bianchini-Purvis started the charity in 2011 after her own parents, both military veterans, were honoured with a poppy at the Field of Honour. She said her daughter asked why the other fallen veterans there did not receive the same tribute. The charity now runs more than 300 ceremonies across the country each year.
Students are asked to write reflection letters afterward. Bianchini-Purvis said many tell the charity that Remembrance had meant little to them before, "it was a holiday, or a day at the mall."
