Students place poppies on veterans’ graves, to ensure all are remembered

VANCOUVER – Seventy-five Grade 6 students from Rockheights Middle School in Esquimalt placed more than 2,000 poppies on veterans’ graves Friday morning.

As part of the ‘No Stone Left Alone’ initiative the students put a poppy on military headstones to ensure every veteran is remembered.

“It’s a chance for the students of Canada to honour the veterans of Canada,” said Cameron Ross, retired Major-General, Colonel of the Regiment with Lord Strathcona”s Horse (Royal Canadians).

“This is what it’s all about, it’s about the students,” he added.

Sythena Lushaw, who is a student at Rockheights, said she thinks this is a great way to respect the fallen soldiers. “I feel that the spirit that rests in the stone feels happiness and love,” she said, adding that it makes her feel sad because the soldiers died in the line of duty protecting everyone.

This was the first event of its kind in British Columbia, but the program started in Edmonton in 2011.

It’s the vision of Maureen Bianchini Purvis, whose parents served for Canada in World War II.

“My mother passed away when I was a young girl of 12, and as she was dying she asked not to be forgotten on Remembrance Day,” Bianchini-Purvis told Global Edmonton at the 2013 ceremony.

It wasn’t until her daughter noticed that many veterans’ graves did not have poppies on them that the idea for ‘No Stone Left Alone‘ was born.

This year, about 3,400 students from schools across three provinces will lay almost 20,000 poppies on the graves of veterans.