TIGNISH, P.E.I. — Floyd Gaudet uses a popular coffee shop to describe the interest and the traffic the Tignish Legion’s Remembrance Banners project has created.
“It’s a new Tim Hortons drive-thru,” Gaudet, a co-ordinator of the banner project, said about the number of vehicles and foot traffic entering the parking lot to view the banners.
Last Saturday, in preparation for Remembrance Day, around two dozen volunteers gathered to mount banners to poles around the parking lot.
The two-sided banners have photos of veterans from the Tignish area, ranging from people still in active service and retired personnel to deceased veterans including ones killed in action.
The banners all carry the message, “Thank you for our freedom.”
It was Tignish Legion president Jackie Doucette who proposed the banner project 13 months ago. Plans for the project were unveiled during last year’s Remembrance Day banquet at the branch. “It’s been pretty amazing, the way it unfolded,” Doucette said.
The banners are displayed right next to the legion’s Veterans Memorial Garden.
“I think it is a great tie-in. It dovetails right into the whole meaning of the garden,” Gaudet reflected. “The garden is more of a global thing; it’s more at a national level of what Canada did on the world stage as far as war and conflicts, whereas the banners are more local and closer to home.”
The banner committee had originally planned to place the banners on utility poles throughout the town but, when use of the poles was denied, they came up with a plan to erect posts around their parking lot and to place the banners there.
“It might have been a blessing in disguise,” Gaudet said. “By having them all located at the legion, around our parking lot, you can just casually drive-in or walk through it and take your time and read them.”
Four banners at the parking lot’s entrance bear photographs of the plaques at the Tignish and Palmer Road cenotaphs which identify the names of people from the area who were killed in action during the First and Second World Wars.
There are 71 banners, arranged alphabetically by last name, of veterans from the area. The arrangement does not necessarily carry forward alphabetically by first name as there was an effort made to keep family members next to each other.
“It just makes it easier for family members to zoom in on it,” Gaudet explained. One family has five banners in a row.
“It’s been overwhelming, to be honest with you, the demand and the response,” he said.
And that has led to a new challenge: “We could probably put up another 40 banners, easy, with the calls that came in, in the last 48 hours,” he said.
"For such a small community, the footprint of our area, the amount of people who wore the uniform is truly amazing,” he added.
The challenge is, based on the current configuration of posts, there is only room for five more banners.
Gaudet said the committee will meet later this month, after the Remembrance Day services are over, to consider how it can best honour the new requests.
“There’s been a whack of calls. Some people are calling and saying they want two and three.”
Gaudet believes the project has helped heighten interest in this year’s Remembrance Day preparations and Remembrance Day banquet, and he hopes it leads to more people joining the legion.
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