Giving thanks
Breslau Public School plants 700 poppies on the front lawn
BRESLAU — Debby Pavlove went to Belgium last summer and had a moment that awed her.
Visiting a First World War memorial, she looked at a stone wall of names, soldiers killed without known graves. One name caught her eye among 55,000 names etched in stone: William James Barton.
He was her great-great uncle, killed in action Nov. 6, 1917. Pavlove knew of him but didn’t search the Menin Gate Memorial to find him.
“All of a sudden I got chills,” she said. “We had no idea what country he even fought in. And on a monument of 55,000 names, not even looking for him, saw and found his name. That was a very powerful moment.”
Pavlove and her family did more research on Barton while in Belgium. “By far the most moving experience was being able to see the fields, 100 years later, where my great-great uncle had fought and was killed.”
Barton, 24, was a clerk from Whitby, Ont., who fought in the infantry. He now has 700 strangers giving thanks for his sacrifice. They are students, teachers and staff at Breslau Public School, where Pavlove teaches.
She brought Barton’s story into her Grade 4 classroom. Students thought about him while placing 700 poppies on the school’s front lawn, one poppy for everyone at the school.
Students helped fashion 100 silver identity tags, representing 100 years since the Passchendaele battle that killed Barton. One hundred students chose 100 different words to decorate each tag. The words they chose included desire, loss, hard, safe, caring, crying, honour, sacrifice.
The identity tags mirror a remembrance project at the Passchendaele Memorial Museum in Belgium. You can go online there to leave a message of peace until Friday. A selection of messages will be engraved on identity tags for a permanent work of art.
In Breslau, the exhibit includes 24 red identity tags, one for each year of Barton’s life.
It includes 16 green tags representing almost 16,000 Canadians killed or wounded at Passchendaele.
Owen Hopkins, 9, has learned that millions died in the First World War, that the Passchendaele battle was fought a century ago, and that trenches were overrun with rats the size of cats.
“We remember the soldiers that sacrificed their life, just for us to have a good life today,” he said.
“I feel really sad for the people who had to fight, because I wish there could just be peace in the world. But I also feel really happy that we won, because the world would be different if we didn’t.”
Danika Tanev, 9, has learned that children can make a difference, by remembering soldiers who died for Canada.
“It’s just sad seeing all the solders die,” she said. “I’m just really happy that they did that for us.”