A virtual ceremony will give New West residents a chance to honour veterans and their sacrifices this Remembrance Day.
Like last year, New Westminster’s 2021 Remembrance Day service will feature a virtual ceremony that will be livestreamed starting at 10:30 a.m.
“Everyone that we partnered with last year is contributing this year, and we have also added a few partners,” said Lisa Kemp, the city’s program coordinator of special events. “We are really focusing on it being a community event.”
The city, working in partnership with the New Westminster Royal Canadian Legion, The Royal Westminster Regiment and other community organizations, has developed plans that will allow community members to honour veterans and their sacrifices in a safe way.
“There were certainly many discussions about the direction for this year’s service,” Kemp said. “There was consensus on the committee that this was the direction they wanted to go this year.”
In addition to considering the potential risk to veterans and others attending an in-person event, Kemp said the online event builds on the success of last year’s virtual ceremony.
“The attendance was quite high last year,” she said. “We actually received feedback from the public that they found it more accessible being virtual. So building on that success, that also factored into the decision.”
The ceremony will include poetry readings, a memorial address, two minutes of silence and the wreath ceremony. Music components will be provided by the Royal Westminster Regiment Band, the Dawco Triumph Street Pipe Band and Elizabeth Irving.
The ceremony can be viewed on the City of New Westminster’s YouTube and Facebook pages and on Telus’ Optik channel 710 for Telus customers. People can watch it at 10:30 a.m. or later in the day.
Organizers of Remembrance Day events in New West are providing a number of opportunities for remembrance this year.
On Remembrance Day, people can participate in a self-guided walking tour of World War One veterans’ homes in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood. The tour, presented by Heritage New West, is on Thursday, Nov. 11 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but if it’s raining, the signs outside each home on the tour will not be set up.
“Interpretive posters telling their stories were created by New Westminster’s Heritage Preservation Society and researched and written by local historian Jim Wolf,” said a notice about the event. “Museum staff will place these posters along the street outside each of the homes listed on the map for people to explore at their own pace.”
The theme of this year’s Remembrance Day ceremony is the 100th Anniversary of the Remembrance Poppy in Canada.
“In 1921, inspired by John McCrae's In Flanders Fields, Madame Anna Guérin, had an idea: to adopt the distribution of the poppy on Armistice Day as a way to raise money for veterans' needs and to remember those who had given their lives during the First World War,” said the city’s website. “In July of 1921, the Great War Veterans Association (which in 1925 would unify with other Veteran groups to form the Canadian Legion) adopted the poppy as the flower of remembrance. Since then, this tradition of remembrance has been upheld.”
The New Westminster Public Library is providing kids with a free, take-home poppy craft, which allows them to create a poppy similar to the original poppy used on Remembrance Day. Kits can be picked up at the uptown and Queensborough branches from Nov. 6 to 10.
Community members can also check out the Poppy Project installation, a large blanket featuring more than 1,000 poppies created by local knitters and crocheters. It will be on display at Queensborough Community Centre from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, Centennial Community Centre from Nov. 2 to 8 and New Westminster City Hall from Nov. 8 to 12.
Details about all of the ways community members can commemorate Remembrance Day 2021 in New West can be found at www.newwestcity.ca/remembranceday.
“There are many different options for the community to honour Remembrance Day – that’s why the website is so comprehensive,” Kemp said. “It can be as simple as wearing a poppy or watching the virtual ceremony.”
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