Rocky View County (RVC) officials will once again be joining the annual No Stone Left Alone ceremony on Nov. 6, this time joining students from St. Veronica School in Airdrie and St. Gabriel School in Chestermere.
The ceremony takes place at the Garden of Peace Cemetery as it has for the last 10 years.
Todd Baker, the cemetery operations lead coordinator, noticed schools in Calgary taking part in the No Stone Left Alone program over a decade ago and wanted to do his part to contribute.
“Hopefully it helps tie the [students] into Remembrance Day and how we're never supposed to forget those that have fought for our freedoms,” Baker said.
Students from local schools do their part in the ceremony and then place a Canadian flag and a poppy on the grave of each soldier at the County’s Garden of Peace Cemetery.
“There are about 550 [veteran markers,]" said Baker. “They lay a poppy down and reiterate the person's name on the marker and do a couple seconds of reflection.”
The group makes sure all veterans are looked after, transforming the cemetery into a sight of Flanders Fields with its poppies.
Despite the temperature dropping to -30 C last year, Baker said the students insisted they finish placing every poppy even after they were offered to quit.
“They said they wanted every marker identified, even in the snowstorm, they went out,” he said.
No Stone Left Alone is an annual ceremony held in advance of Remembrance Day, launched by the No Stone Left Alone Memorial Foundation.
Students and youth across the country take part in placing poppies on the headstones of veterans to honour their sacrifice and service.
The program was initially launched in 2011 by Maureen G. Bianchini-Purvis from Edmonton in recognition of the sacrifice of the Canadian men and women who lost their lives in the service of peace, at home and abroad, according to the No Stone Left Alone website.
Bianchini-Purvis honoured her own mother with a poppy each Remembrance Day in Edmonton and it became her mission that all the soldiers' headstones would have a poppy placed in their honour, the website stated.
Her thoughts were that through this display of remembrance, the cemetery would resemble the sight of Flanders Fields where, “The poppies grow, row on row."
The goal of the program is to see all 117,000 veterans’ headstones in Canada being honoured with a poppy placed by a Canadian youth, stated the No Stone Left Alone website.
Join RVC at 11 a.m. Monday Nov. 6 for this special ceremony. For more information about the program, visit www.nostoneleftalone.ca.
