EDMONTON – As a small token of remembrance, students in the Edmonton area and Jasper laid more than 10,000 poppies at the headstones of soldiers Friday.
It’s a tradition that started with one Edmonton family.
“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,” explained Maureen Bianchini-Purvis.
To honour her mother’s dying wish, Bianchini-Purvis has been coming to Edmonton’s Beechmount Cemetery each November and placing a poppy on the graves of her parents, both of whom were war veterans.
One year, her daughter asked why not do the same for all the veterans laid to rest at the cemetery. That suggestion turned into the launch of an educational program in 2011 called No Stone Left Alone.
The non-profit Alberta organization helps ensure that Canadian soldiers who have died are not forgotten.
“One of the most important things of No Stone Left Alone, for me,” said Major Sandy Cooper with the 3rd Cdn Div Support Group, “is the educational component, where students of all age groups get to not only partake in the ceremony – as the actual layers of the poppies – but they also get to learn the context of what it means to serve our country as a soldier, and to pay the ultimate price.”
Nellie McClung student Natasha Cartier, whose two great-grandfathers fought in World War II, was among the many students involved in the ceremony Friday, that was emceed by our Gord Steinke and attended by a number of provincial and military dignitaries.
As Cartier laid each poppy down, she paused at each headstone and said, ‘thank you for serving, Lest We Forget, and Rest In Peace.”
“The least we could do is show them some respect and just remember that they did something for us that’s so important.”
Bianchini-Purvis hopes to one day make this a Canada-wide initiative. She thinks her mother would be proud.
“When I’m up there that moment at the prayer,” she said, her eyes welling up, “I’m speaking to her then, saying: ‘this is for you, I haven’t forgotten.'”
Extra: Remembrance Day ceremonies in and around Edmonton
To learn more about the No Stone Alone organization, watch our interviews below:
With files from Laurel Gregory, Global News
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