Monday, November 11, 2013

Remembering Them...

The Cross of Sacrifice; one of the military sections at Mountain View Cemetery, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

When I went yesterday to put Canadian flags on my parents' grave for Remembrance Day at Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, I also took more photos of other graves. I do that almost every time I'm there, but I have made myself a pledge for this year and next to take photos in all the military sections and of all the military related headstones and plaques or other memorials that I can locate. 

This is a large cemetery, 106 acres, with about 92,000 grave sites and now new columbaria too. Mountain View estimates that there are 12,000 veterans buried there, as well as a number (about 320) who died in active service. However, many veterans are not identified as such (like my parents) and about 900 of the veterans identified do not have individual markers, although there is a Veterans Project to collect funds for that purpose.

All across Canada today, people are remembering Canada's war dead. [Link to CBC's on-going coverage.]  This year, leading up to the centenary of World War I, I'm thinking, as I always do, of my great uncle, Bert Saggers, who died 11 November 1916 in France.