No Stone Left Alone

On a wet and cold November day 350 students and their teachers filed along the sidewalks of New Westminster. 260 from Skwo:wech, 90 from Herbert Spencer.

The grade 2-5 students filled the roadways through the centre of Fraser Cemetery … ready to partake in the No Stone Left Alone ceremony. They stood quietly through waxing and waning showers, listening to the Remembrance Day-like ceremony. They heard about the sacrifice of those who have served in the Canada’s military, recited poems in English and French, and they took a moment of silence as the bugler finished the final notes of The Last Post.

Then each student took a poppy as classes filed into the rows of graves, in a section of the cemetery that is dedicated to fallen soldiers. Each student stood in front of a gravestone and was asked to kneel or crouch down, to read the years and contemplate the age of the person they were there to honour, and to consider both their life and their death before placing the poppy on the grave.

This nation-wide initiative has grown each year in New Westminster. And through a simple act of laying poppies, it connects kids’ learning directly to the families and histories that have deep roots in our community.