News

On May 25 & 26, 2016 the Canadian Fallen Heroes Foundation was on site at LloydMall to display the 10 memorial prints that the community of Lloydminster commissioned for their fallen heroes. These will be sent to Pioneer Lodge in Lloydminster for permanent display on Remembrance Day 2016 and will be joining 20 already on display.

Please visit http://www.meridianbooster.com/2016/06/02/fallen-heroes-foundation-helps-us-remember to read the article about our display in the Lloydminster Meridian Booster.

For more information on the fallen heroes of Lloydminster, please visit the IN MEMORIAM section of our website at www.canadianfallenhereoes.com.

May 27, 2016 – Together with the Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 11 – Vermilion, we unveiled and gifted portraits of fallen heroes that hailed from the County of Vermilion River. For a full photo album, please visit our Facebook page by searching Canadian Fallen Heroes at www.facebook.com.

We would like to extend our thanks and gratitude to the members and executive of Branch No. 11, Branch President Mr. Gary Zayac and Mr. Barry Roth for making this a special and successful event for everyone involved. The prints will be joining those already on display so we can forever remember the sacrifice of these local fallen heroes.

For more information on the fallen heroes from the County of Vermilion River, please visit the IN MEMORIAM section of our website at www.canadianfallenheroes.ca

For more information about the Royal Canadian Legion and their commitment to communities throughout Canada, please visit www.legion.ca or call the Vermilion Branch at 1.780.853.5867

John Pritchard students research ‘Fallen Heroes’

While John Pritchard School was preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary in October, some Grade 7 students from the school were also stepping back a century to research local soldiers from the First World War.

They were working on a project that was the brainchild of John Pritchard teacher Daniel Smith and Linda Kohut, a retired JP teacher who is now a school liaison for the Royal Canadian Legion on Henderson Highway.

Ms. Kohut visited the class to tell them stories about the First World War and how fallen soldiers are commemorated in Europe, “to light a fire in them,” she says. Then the students did online research on 48 First World War soldiers from the River East area who had been killed on the battlefield or died as a result of combat wounds and illnesses.

They spent hours on the Library and Archives Canada website, looking for the scanned enlistment documents for these soldiers. From there, they collected information on each of the soldiers, including their name, address, occupation, rank, battalion and next of kin. Then they visited the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website to look up where these soldiers were buried, or in the case of those missing in action, commemorated.

They created write-ups on each of the soldiers and provided them to the Canadian Fallen Heroes Foundation, which maintains a virtual memorial at www.canadianfallenheroes.com. The students will be listed on the site in recognition for their efforts.

Mr. Smith says he was pleasantly surprised at the connection his Grade 7 class felt to the project and the soldiers they studied. He credits it with giving them a more tangible connection to the war.

“You can talk about a war and 60,000 people missing, but it’s different when you talk about a certain guy who lived in that house that’s still there just down the street,” says Mr. Smith. “It’s not about some faraway place. It’s in Winnipeg, in our neighbourhood, and it’s real.”

The students would like to have photos of the soldiers to go with the profiles they’ve created. They’ve posted a list of the soldiers on their school website so the community can check it out. If anyone has a photo of a soldier on the list, they can contact the school.  Visit: retsd.mb.ca/school/jp

River East Transcona School Division