Red, White Indifferent
Negotiating Remembrance in Canada
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Bianca Weber (14) reads a prayer during the No Stone Left Alone Remembrance ceremony at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Edmonton on Nov. 8, 2013. Photo Courtesy of No Stone Left Alone.
Students place poppies next to a headstone as part of the No Stone Left Alone initiative in Edmonton, November 9, 2012. Photo courtesy of No Stone Left Alone.
at Beachmount in Edmonton alone. And we would just always go to the cenotaph after and look out and we would think ‘wow it would be incredible if they all did get one’ [poppy]. So I said, let’s try.”
That simple question from her daughter led to the creation of No Stone Left Alone, a grassroots project that has built into a registered non-profit which focuses on providing a connection between school aged children and veterans, as well as placing a poppy at the grave of every soldier buried in a field of honour across Alberta. With a solider or veteran, elementary school students each take a row of graves and place a poppy on each. Now in its fourth year, the organization places over 10,000 poppies at 19 cemeteries in Edmonton and one in Jasper, Alb. while providing a live feed accessible to all elementary schools across the province.
The organization still considers itself grassroots, and hopes to expand across Canada. Many people in a variety of provinces have contacted them, such as Marjorie Steel of British Columbia who followed Maureen's lead; she and her children placed 400 poppies by themselves at a field of honour in Surrey, B.C..
Remembrance has always had a grassroots element; from the small scale distribution of poppies following the First World War, which grew into the Royal Canadian Legion’s poppy campaign, to Canadian Veterans turning their backs on Federal politicians at the 2013 National Remembrance Day Ceremony, symbolizing the way they feel the government has turned their backs on Afghanistan Veterans. Indeed, some of the most important symbols of remembrance have risen from movements at the grassroots level.
Grassroots movements are particularly effective when it comes to remembrance because remembrance is a personal journey. While we may not identify with the symbolism of unknown names on the cenotaph, many Canadians can identify with the grassroots movements, and have effectively used them as a tool to explain how and why Canadians should remember.
Not all movements are equally effective, and many fail at reaching a wider audience, while others flourish among likeminded people. An example of the latter comes from Edmonton, Alberta.
Maureen Purvis grew up with both parents as active military. While her grassroots movement didn’t begin until long after she became an adult, the importance of remembrance was a value she ensured her daughter understood and what began to drive her long before her grassroots initiative.
“Just before my mother passed away, I had a little conversation with her as a 12 year old; and the one thing that stuck out in my mind was that she asked me not to forget her on Armistice Day,” Purvis explained. “So every year I would take my poppy in November and bring it to her at her headstone. As I grew up and had children, I had them come with me and my husband, and we would go every year and bring her a poppy. When my daughter was 10 she began to ask why all the other soldiers never got a poppy. And I made excuses at the beginning; to say that families had moved away or no loved ones live in Edmonton, but there’s so many, over 4148 headstones