Another Remembrance Day and once again hundreds of Cochrane folk will gather at the high school and the cenotaph to pay their respects.
Canada’s war dead will be remembered in gratitude and sorrow.
It’s a tradition in Cochrane that the Remembrance Day service actually starts at the high school then parades downtown to the cenotaph.
Some question why O Canada is not played at the cenotaph and it’s simply because it is played and sung at the opening of the high school portion.
So the high school crowd, led by RCMP in their red serge, march down the hill and it’s quite an impressive sight.
Then the wreath-laying at the cenotaph.
And it ends when the people make their way to the cenotaph and in their own way give thanks to those who fell by removing their poppy from their lapels and in a quiet moment place them on the shrine.
That’s always a moving moment as everyone from kids to seniors pay their respects.
There are Remembrance Day services throughout the area but a special one is at the Stoney Nation at Morley.
As you drive west on Highway 1A, you’ll come to an intersection about half way to Exshaw. Turn left, or south, and you’re into the Morley townsite. But I urge you to look right instead and high on the top of the hill you will see a native warrior on a horse.
That’s a memorial to Joe Poucette.
Joe Poucette was a member of the Wesley band in the Stoney Nation and he was killed in action Aug. 14, 1945, in Normandy. He was a Rifleman in the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and is buried in the Canadian war cemetery at Brettville-Sur-Laize with 2,872 other Canadians.
Joe’s mother had great difficulty accepting that her son was buried in a foreign land and didn’t accept that tragic fact until the 1950s when Joe’s step-brother visited the French grave site and brought home a handful of dirt from his grave.
Then, and only then, would Joe’s mother believe her son was gone and the family tenderly spread dirt from his French grave on the family burial plots in the Wesley Cemetery at Morley.
The Morley Remembrance Day service is at the United Church at 11 a.m. and then a further service at the Wesley Cemetery.
Take time to remember.
They died for us.
