The Niagara Falls History Museum showed its respect for veterans with a “cascading” poppy display around the facility on Wednesday.
The initiative was a collaboration with local stitching guild, Stick’N Needles, which provided the Remembrance Day exhibit for the building’s interior and exterior.
Assistant curator of the museum Christine Girardi says the display follows in the footsteps of a number of other museums, community centres and churches across Canada and the Commonwealth that have displayed the crocheted poppies on the side of buildings.
“We just sent the call out for these poppies to be sent to us, and things really snowballed from there,” said Girardi.
“To be honest, COVID-19, I think had a really big hand in this project becoming as big as it did. Due to our isolation, in those sort of little moments, people were looking for something that they could do at home.”
Over 11,000 poppy donations came from every province in Canada, in addition to 25 different states in the U.S., Denmark and New Zealand, according to Girardi.
The poppies can be seen on the stone exterior and interior of the museum on Ferry Street, which was built in 1874.
Girardi says not all poppies were displayed due to the fact there was not enough time and staff to affix them to the netting which dawns the exterior of the building.
The museum says much of the excess creations will be sent to other institutions in Niagara Region to create their own displays.
“So in future years, we will be putting our display up every year for as long as the poppies last,” Girardi said.
“The hope is that with the poppy project, people could drive around the Niagara region and see multiple buildings with these exterior installations in early November.”