Lest we forget is Canada’s way of reminding us to take a moment each year to remember those men and women who fought for our freedom overseas.
But how can the next generation of Canadians be expected to remember something that happened more than 60 years ago?
This is the question the New Westminster-based Society of Officers of the Honourable Guard is attempting to answer with a new program aimed at preserving the memory of fallen soldiers.
In partnership with Richard McBride elementary, the Honourable Guard Society has adopted seven war graves in Fraser Cemetery as a way of bringing Remembrance Day to a more tangible level. Together, the society and a class of Grade 4 and 5 students from Richard McBride will care for the chosen soldiers’ graves – of which most were soldiers from New Westminster.
“It’s important that (learning) isn’t stale. All of us read textbooks, and we learn our dates and figures, and we learn about people, but these are people from New Westminster,” said Robert Rathbun, one of the members of the Honourable Guard Society.
The society hopes by involving the students in an interactive project, that will run more than one month each year, they can show the students why it’s important to pause and remember those who were lost because of war.
“We’re helping teach the children about these particular veterans,” he said. “These are our brothers and sisters and neighbours.”
By teaching the children about people from New Westminster who fought in the war, Rathbun and Richard McBride principal Chris Evans hope the students will come away with a better understanding of Canada’s history.
“It brings it home,” Rathbun said.
Rathbun approached Evans last year about the possibility of doing the program. The two talked it over and on Nov. 7 the first group of students braved the rainy weather to visit the seven veterans chosen by the society.
A division of Grades 4 and 5 followed Rathbun around the Fraser Cemetery as he explained who the seven people were, their roles in the military and where they lived. Some of the departed even attended the old Richard McBride school, much to the delight of the students.
After Rathbun gave a brief history of the person, a chosen student placed a small Canadian flag on the grave. Grade 4 student Mattheus Van Garderen was the first student chosen to place a flag on a grave – the grave of Maj. John Henry Hoult.
Hoult was a Major in the Royal Canadian Infantry Corps’ motors unit and died on April 17, 1944. Hoult, who went by the name Jack, also attended Richard McBride elementary, and his name can be found on a plaque at the school, along with other McBride graduates who served in the war.
Mattheus, who had the honour of placing a flag on Hoult’s grave, was keen to participate in a Remembrance Day program that got him out of the classroom.
“I thought like, ‘Yay, this is going to be exciting,’” he told The Record. “It’s definitely more interesting than sitting at your desk and listening to your teacher telling you about soldiers.”
Both Rathbun and Evans are hoping the program will eventually spread to other schools in the district, but for now they’re content with the shape it has begun to take.
And it seems Mattheus agrees.
“I think it’s very interesting and it’s just kind of cool,” he said.
