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By Shaun Penner

Grave Marker Maintenance Program

Veterans’ grave sites in the Peace Region getting repairs thanks to federal program

Aug 27, 2020 | 1:35 PM

Veterans’ grave markers across the Peace Country will be getting a face lift, thanks to a federal program aimed at ensuring Veterans’ grave sites are properly maintained.

Bear Creek Funeral Home has been tabbed by Veterans’ Affairs Canada (VAC) to provide maintenance work around the Peace Region for the Veterans’ Grave Marker Maintenance program. The goal of the program is to make approximately 57,000 repairs to Veterans’ grave sites across Canada by the year 2023, thanks to an investment of $24.4 million from the federal government in 2018.

Eunice Friesen, the owner of Bear Creek Funeral Home, says VAC has identified the sites in need of repair around the area already.

“Veterans’ Affairs took a look and went across the region and looked at which monuments need to be replaced, which ones need to be maintained, which ones need to be pulled out and straightened and levelled and all that.”

The work will see Bear Creek Funeral Home make repairs at cemeteries across the Peace Region, including the City and County of Grande Prairie, MD of Greenview, Saddle Hills County, Spirit River, Birch Hills County, Fairview, MD of Smoky River, and Peace River.

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Friesen says they are grateful to be chosen to do the work and are looking forward to making the needed upgrades around the region, especially at the more rural cemeteries.

“It’s always such a tug to (get) back to our roots and back home with these smaller country cemeteries,” said Friesen. “We’re really happy to be doing the Valhalla and Halcourt and Webster cemetery up north.”

Friesen says they have started on the work already and are hoping to have their part of the federal project complete by the end of October, weather permitting.

VAC says that nationwide, as of the end of March, they have completed repairs on 45 per cent of the identified sites. In Alberta, that number sits at 58.6 per cent.