The Veterans Memorial Gardens in Grande Prairie (Photo: Shaun Penner / EverythingGP)

By Liam Verster

Honouring those who fought for Canada

Grande Prairie’s National Aboriginal Veterans Day ceremony goes Sunday

Nov 7, 2020 | 5:09 PM

Sunday, November 8, is National Aboriginal Veterans Day, and to mark the day there will be a ceremony at the Veterans Memorial Gardens and Interpretive Centre. The ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m.

Renee Charbonneau, the Project Lead at the Memorial Gardens and Executive Director of the Canadian Motorcycle Tourism Association (CMTA), says this is the third year that they will hold a ceremony to mark the day.

“We have a Royal Canadian Legion Honour Guard or Colour Party leading a parade into Veterans Memorial Gardens and Interpretive Centre… and then we have a number of different speakers, some are Indigenous, some are RCMP, and some local dignitaries.”

There will also be a land transfer ceremony, as the Army-Navy-Airforce Veterans of Canada Unit 389 hands over the land where the Memorial Gardens and Interpretive Centre are located to the CMTA. This is part of a deal that was arranged years ago when the CMTA agreed to build the Afghanistan War Memorial and get the property hooked up to the necessary utilities. Through this agreement, it was determined that once that work was complete, the property would be ‘sold’ to the CMTA for $1.

This year’s ceremony will look a little different due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions. The CMTA has already recorded a number of video statements from elders and others who won’t be able to attend in person, which will be shared online as well as be shown in advance of the ceremony.

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The ceremony itself will also be live streamed through the Memorial Garden’s Facebook Page, so that those who cannot attend in-person can still view the ceremony and pay their respects.

“Our lives need to go on, and remembrance has to happen, we can never forget the sacrifice of these people, we just can’t,” says Charbonneau.

Charbonneau adds that it’s a very important day, especially because First Nations Peoples were excluded from ceremonies until quite recently.

“Sadly, our Indigenous People, until 1994, were not welcome to lay a wreath at the cenotaphs in ceremonies across Canada. Sadly, even though they were treated very much like equals in the military, when they came home, that wasn’t always the case.”

“So, they wanted a way to honour their war-dead that didn’t take away or detract from the Remembrance Day ceremony, and they wanted to do something to honour their veterans, their warriors, in their own unique way.”

Charbonneau says they are honoured to carry on the tradition that helps people understand the magnitude of the sacrifice their service cost, as they went out to fight for Canada.