Downtown banners honour the fallen and living
Waterloo Region is getting ready for Remembrance Day
WATERLOO REGION — Banners featuring photos of war veterans can be seen fluttering in the wind in Hespeler and Elmira this week.
This Remembrance Day campaign is a first for Hespeler, where 22 banners are now hanging from light posts around the cenotaph at the corner of Queen and Tannery streets.
“People are proud to see their family members honoured,” said Bill Kalbhenn, a veteran service officer at the Hespeler branch of the Royal Canadian Legion.
“We need to make sure we continue educating people about veteran affairs and veteran issues.”
Each banner displays a photo and name of a veteran.
They vary from First World War soldiers to more recent service members.
Although the program is organized by the local legion branch, the banners are paid for by veterans’ families and will be returned to them on Nov. 15 after they are removed.
Kalbhenn said he got the idea from other communities in southwestern Ontario with similar campaigns to mark Remembrance Day.
One of those communities is Elmira.
Its local legion branch is in its second year of running the veteran banner program. It started last year with 17 banners scattered in Elmira’s downtown core. This year the legion had six more families order banners, bringing the total to 23.
“They are a wonderful way to
honour our veterans,” said Rae Ann Bauman of the Elmira branch of the Royal Canadian Legion.
Bauman said the program isn’t only for local veterans who have passed away. Families of living veterans or veterans not from Elmira or Waterloo Region can also be featured in the program.
“A veteran no matter where you live is a veteran,’ she said.
In Elmira, the program operates a bit differently. The banners are paid for by the family of each veteran and part of the proceeds of Elmira’s banner program will go to the Royal Canadian Legion’s outreach program for homeless veterans, called Leave the Streets Behind.
The banners will be removed at the end of the month and stored at the legion branch in Elmira where they will be displayed on a rotating basis until next November. Bauman said the legion was fortunate enough to have the local fire department install the banners and have the Elmira Business Improvement Area offer the use of its banner posts for the month of November.
In Hespeler, Kalbhenn had to allocate some of the fees he collected from families to pay for installation and permits to hang up the banners, but he said the local business improvement area was very supportive in allowing him to use banner posts.
Despite the legwork involved, he is proud of how well the project turned out. He said he already has a long list of families who want to order banners for next year.
To learn more about the program, contact the Royal Canadian Legion’s Elmira branch at 519-669-3932, or the Hespeler branch at 519-658-2842.