Peachland organizers forging ahead amid pandemic

The largest annual indoor event in Peachland will have a much smaller feel to it this year because of COVID-19.

But organizers of the Remembrance Day service, which has drawn as many as 600 people to the town’s community centre, hope to make it a poignant and meaningful ceremony nonetheless.

Per the pandemic rules, only 50 people — including dignitaries and veterans — will be permitted inside the centre on Nov. 11.

“It really tugs at my heartstrings that we have to limit the attendance this year,” Jean Saul, president of the Peachland Legion, said Thursday.

“Of course, we have no choice because of the virus,” she said. “But we normally put out 400 chairs and every one of them’s taken, and there’s people standing all around the walls, out into the foyer, even right outside the front door.”

Legion officials are still trying to come up with a way to allocate the very few seats that will be available for members of the public. Discussions are underway with town staff about the possibility of webcasting the service.

“Really, we’ll probably be promoting the idea of ‘remembering-in-place,’ observing Nov. 11 at home with your family,” Saul said.

Like other Legions, the Peachland branch will start offering its poppies on Oct. 30. The branch collects about $10,000 annually from poppies and wreaths, and Saul hopes for the same amount this year.

Last fall, the Peachland Legion sold nearly 1,000 Dutch-grown tulip bulbs for townsfolk to plant in their yards. They bloomed this spring in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Holland’s liberation from Nazi Germany by Canadian troops.

This past May 5, the day the Dutch celebrate the liberation, plans were for the Peachland Legion to also hold a service and light 21 candles, one each in memory of the townsmen who’ve died in war.

“We had to put that off because of the pandemic,” Saul notes. “But however we end up holding the Remembrance Day service, whatever it looks like, we want to light those candles.”