The graves of area veterans won’t be forgotten this year as No Stone Left Alone gets underway in the coming weeks.
This will be the fifth year of the ceremony, which goes around to each of the cemeteries in the region and places a flag and poppy on the graves of veterans to thank them for their service.
The first ceremony will take place Nov. 1 at St. Mary Catholic Cemetery with students from St. Mary School.
The following week on Nov. 8, Grade 8 and 9 students from R.F. Staples will place the poppies at the Westlock Cemetery at 10:30 a.m.
The ceremony will include a performance from the R.F. Staples band class and a march-in from the Westlock Cadet Corps. Military personnel and the Legion Colour Party may attend but organizers didn’t have that confirmed. The public is invited to attend.
The communities of Rochester, Tawatinaw, Nestow, Busby and Hazel Bluff will also hold No Stone Left Alone ceremonies on dates to be determined.
The Flatbush Legion will hold its own in Jarvie, Fawcett, Flatbush and Cross Lake.
“Being a veteran myself, and my twin brother, it laid on my heart that it was something I wanted do and I heard about,” said organizer and Westlock Royal Canadian Legion Branch 97 chaplain Marjorie Steele, who learned about Edmonton’s No Stone Left Alone ceremony six years ago.
Steele recalled the first year when the kids met veterans from the Afghanistan War at the ceremony.
“Their eyes were as big as saucers listening to what some of these fellows told them about why it’s so important to remember those that have served our country. It really struck them,” she said.
There are almost 100 veterans lying in the Westlock Cemetery, 31 at the St. Mary Catholic Cemetery and around 40 in Dungannon Cemetery. In total, there are 449 graves that are known in the Westlock and Thorhild counties and in Rochester.
Steele and her friend Harry Marshall started the ceremony in the Westlock area five years ago, searching out graves of veterans one by one.
“It’s taken a lot of shoe leather to find them all,” Steele said.
“Harry and I spent many an hour walking through the cemeteries around this area looking for veterans’ graves. Some of them are not hard to find because they have an actual headstone that is provided by the Legion if people know that, which they should, and some of them have their regimental number on a different type of headstone.
“So that’s how we found them, by guess and by golly. We started at one end and walked down every row up and down, up and down, up and down.”
Steele had a notice in the paper and very few people came forward with names.
However, she did learn that in Pickardville lies the only veteran in the area to have served in both the Boer War (1899-1902) and the First World War.
Families that would like their relative’s gravesite recognized should contact the Legion before Nov. 11.
The Legion’s annual poppy campaign gets underway Oct. 27. The first Remembrance Day ceremony will be held at Smithfield Lodge on Nov. 2
