Volunteers cleaning sticks and stones in Mount Pleasant's veterans section (Photo Credits: Konstantinos Drossos)
Members of the Royal Canadian Legion of London gathered at Mount Pleasant Cemetery to clean up the veterans section for Decoration Day, an annual day to remember and commemorate Canadian veterans.
“We’re cleaning all of the Veteran’s grave stones, placing flags on all the veterans grave stones and those that don’t have and we’re going to find because some of them are dispersed amongst the entire Cemetery, so we’re going to put Canadian flags on all of them” says Walter Georgiev, a volunteer who has military family ties.
“My wife’s grandfather served in World War one and her two brothers were reservists at Saint Thomas and my son-in-law is a lieutenant colonel with the Queen’s own in Toronto, so I have a lot of history with with the armed forces and Veterans.”
They gathered with rakes filling up multiple bags with sticks and leaves lying all across the section. The volunteers also consisted of people who served in the Canadians Armed forces, like Jerry Jurazko
“I did 45 years in the army between the reserves and the regular Force; I was posted to Germany for four years in Borde, and London for a couple times a few more, and i did a tour in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2004 for six months” says Jurazko.
Jurazko feels that honoring and commemorating veterans this way offers a path in informing and educating the younger generations on veterans and their involvement in history.
“I talked to the kids on the history side. I find they don’t teach it as much,” says Jurazko. “we saw a lot of people were interested in the 80th anniversary of D-Day and then Remembrance Day and then after that (they) are not going to worry about it.”
Following the clean up, a memorial service was held in front of the Canadian flag at the center of the section with a moment of silence and a bugle call played from an original bugle used during World War 1. Wreaths were presented by federal MP Peter Fragiskatos, MPP Terrance Kernaghan, and Legion zone commander Randy Warden.
