The gravesites of veterans are now more easily identifiable in Williams Lake thanks to the Junior Cadets Society of B.C.
President and Founder, Crystal Sheridan said it was during a gravesite cleanup in May for veterans that the Junior Cadets and Army Cadets noticed that many of the graves are not clearly marked.
“There’s some of them you’d never know that they’re veterans, some are very worn, some from WWI are very difficult to read, and there’s nothing there to commemorate the fact that these people had served so I decided to do something about that,” Sheridan said.
“So I got donations from Windsor Plywood who gave me the wood and Rona gave me the paints, varnish, and the paint brushes.”
Sheridan adds that she also received the permission of the Royal Canadian to use the image of the poppy on the handpainted markers that she was able to create 60 of.
They were placed at the gravesites by a group of Junior Cadets with the assistance from three army cadets from 3064 RCACC on Saturday before Remembrance Day.
Sheridan said as they were able to identify 103 graves that belong to veterans, she will be making more markers and they’ll place them again for Remembrance Day next year.
“A lot of them were very proud to that they were doing it,” she said.
“They were very excited they’d go on a little treasure hunt sort of thing and as soon as they found a grave that belonged to a veteran then they got to mark the grave with a marker themselves.”
“It was quite neat because yesterday (Sunday, Nov. 11) when we were attending the service in the Gibraltar room and they read out the names a lot of the Cadets recognized those names.”