November 10, 2011 Volume 10 • Number 45 50¢ Newsstand Price
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Monument a marker of remembrance Every November 11, we shut our eyes and give one minute of silence to those we have lost through war. It’s been 97 years since the start of the First World War. Kamloops was yet just a small town, but not small enough not to be touched by the loss of war. Faithfully each year, we gather down at Riverside Park to take part in the Remembrance Day Ceremonies but before this was customary we gathered at a different place, Memorial Park whose name aptly implies its origins. In the early 1900’s it wasn’t named Memorial Park, it was simply a nice grassy hill, which lay next to the Kamloops Public School that would become to be known as Stuart Wood. “So many of the soldiers from the area attended this school,� explained Elisabeth Duckworth, museum supervisor at the Kamloops Museum. “A stone Cairn constructed of large cobbles was built next to the school and for years they held memorials service there.� The Cairn predates the Cenotaph by three years. Built in 1922 to commemorate all those lost in the war, this grassy hill, which in those days was home to an old cow path, became Memorial Park. The trees we see there now were planted as a living memorial to those we lost. “The reason the path is windy is because it is an old cow path and that’s how cows climb hills,� furthers Elisabeth. “The Cenotaph came in 1925 after much debate about the location. The trees were planted at the same time.� Started by the Ladies Auxiliary to the Great War Veterans, the club fundraised and bakesaled their way to the beginnings of the monument. After much discussion about the monument itself and where it should be located, there was a vote and the 400 block of Victoria
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View of the Cenotaph over the city in the 1940’s. Photo courtesy of Barry Prost of Kamloops Camera House.
Street won. After the fundraising was all said and done and City Council supplied the rest of the funds, the Cenotaph was finally built but at the new chosen location of Memorial Park. Once built, the Cenotaph made of white granite stood tall and proud over the city. “There was only two Cenotaphs in Canada built with a clock in them,� finishes Elisabeth. “This one and one in Saskatoon. They both bought the clocks from the same place in Britain and both clocks stopped working very soon after installation.�
It was here in these origins of Remembrance that Remembrance Day Ceremonies in Kamloops were born. The Cenotaph, the Cairn and its park are a living reminder of all the local lives lost in the throws of war and a good reminder to us all of what we have to be thankful for. This November, take a walk through Memorial Park. Let the shade of the tall trees tell you their stories and pause to pay tribute to those whose names will live on forever in that spot. Tanya Orozco, freelance
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