Stonewall is remembering local veterans by raising their names into the sky.
Just last week, the Stonewall Heritage Advisory Committee finally saw the product of a year’s worth of work as 15 banners were hung on Stonewall’s Main St. For the past year, the committee has been working on the banner project, which displays the names of 89 Fist World Ware local veterans.
Allison Mankewich of the committee said they’d seen Veterans banners in Selkirk and St. Laurent, and they wanted to do something similar for Stonewall veterans. They’ve spent the past 12 months gathering names and information from the First World War, including all heroes born in, lived in, or worked in Stonewall when they enlisted.
The project is ongoing, and the Stonewall Heritage Advisory Committee plans to make banners for Second World War Veterans next year. They’ll continue to branch out from there. As they receive more information from more relatives, their lists of names will continue to grow.
Some banners have photos of the named soldiers, and others include names simply because the committee has received a few photos. They’re hopeful they’ll get more pictures, more names, and more information to add in the future. Also on the banners are the soldiers’ ranks and medals.
“Every name on the list has a story,” said committee memeber Catherine Precourt. “Every soldier has a story. We don’t necessarily know what those are, but these are young men, for the most part, who were here in school, or working in the quarry, working as a clerk at the grocery store, working at the bank when the war started, and they answered the call.”
Two of those men were Charles and Albert Mollard, local brothers who enlisted at the same time when they were 20 and 18, respectively. The men fought in the trenches during the First World War. Charles was killed in battle.
Tribune Photos by Lana Meier
“[The First World War] was the bloodiest conflict that Canada has ever been in,” said Precourt. “It was trench warfare and it was gruesome.”
After just a week on the frontlines, Albert was wounded. Soon after recovering and returning to battle, he was wounded a second time, but he stayed at his post this time around, continuing to fight. Albert recovered from that — only to get wounded severely for a third time. He spent the rest of the war recovering and returned home to Stonewall, where he returned to working in the quarry.
Another name on the banners is Horace Wood, who worked in the quarry when war was declared. He enlisted immediately, leaving behind his elderly father, whom he was taking care of. Wood spent the next four years in the trenches, where he worked as a cook. Though his father died shortly after he enlisted, Wood wrote letters home to his neighbours throughout the war, keeping in contact with everyone until he was killed in battle right before the end of the war in 1918.
Other names on the banners belong to fighters, medics, stretcher bearers, and everything in between.
“Everyone contributed in some way or another to maintain or to preserve the life that they had here in Canada,” said Precourt. “We have a very good life here, and we owe the freedoms that we have to the men who fought for those rights, who died for those rights.
“I think it’s important that we remember the rights and freedoms we have today came with a price that we didn’t pay.”
The Stonewall Heritage Advisory Committee has seven members who are all working on the banner project. The current banners will come down a little after Remembrance Day and will go back up next year, along with Second World War banners.
The committee encourages locals with veteran family members to contact them and have their relatives honoured along with the others.
