The Society of the Officers of the Honourable Guard is helping to make sure veterans aren’t forgotten.
Since 2013, the society has invited students and community members to help clean up the graves and headstones of veterans and soldiers buried in the military section of Fraser Cemetery. About 75 youth took part in this year’s event on Nov. 3.
“It went really, really well,” said Rob Rathbun, a member of the Society of the Officers of the Honourable Guard. “What we try and tell the children is how everybody is connected, all the stories and everything.”
Along with cleaning the gravestones, the event is an opportunity for community members to share their families’ stories and preserve those stories for future generations.
“All these stories come alive,” Rathbun said. “It’s making it tangible. It’s not just a poppy, it’s a person – here’s the story of this person.”
After the volunteers had left Sunday’s cleanup and organizers were packing up, a couple visited the cemetery to place flowers on a grave that had just been cleaned.
“That was his grandfather,” Rathbun said of the 82-year-old man who visited the site. “He then told us a little bit of a story about his grandfather.”
Rathbun said the man also told them about his father, who served in the Nova Scotia Regiment.
“Here’s the really ironic thing … we just happened to have a Nova Scotia Regiment battle dress tunic on the table that we were showing the kids earlier,” he said. “What are the odds?”
Last year, the Society of the Officers of the Honourable Guard raised money to buy a gravestone for a soldier who had been buried in an unmarked grave after his death in 1939. Because First World War veteran William Stevenson had no family in the area and wasn’t married, there was no one around to pay for a headstone.
Within a few days of launching the fundraiser, the society raised more than $4,500 (more than four times the amount needed to buy Stevenson’s stone) and decided to buy headstones for other veterans buried in unmarked graves at Fraser Cemetery. In partnership with the Last Post Fund, the society will be buying a stone for James McArthur, who was interred on April 26, 1937, but has no stone at his burial site.
The Society of the Officers of the Honourable Guard has posted some videos from Sunday’s event on its Facebook page, including an interview with the man visiting his grandfather’s grave.
