Remembrance Day is only a week away and the poppy campaign has now begun.
The campaign starts two weeks prior to Remembrance Day and so started Oct. 29.
i canvas the business and the lodges and service clubs and I ask fo ra donation to go to the Poppy Fund. Any money that we raise here in Rossland stays in Rossland. There are quite a few stipulations.
The funds have to be used for veterans.
The biggest part of the Rossland campaign goes to five bursaries at the high school and they are grandchildren of a veteran. If we give a bursary to someone other than a grandchild, than that comes out of the general fund at the Legion. it cannot come out of the poppy fund.
Then we have the poppy contest in the school and we give out prize money for the kids for first, second and third in poetry and literature and posters. That comes out of the poppy fund.
Everywhere across Canada it’s the same.
When the service clubs donate they get a wreath to lay on Remembrance Day.
Lafond wanted to make it clear that the veterans don’t sell the poppies, but distribute them.
“If you go down the street and you meet a legionnaire with poppies they’ll probably ask you, “would you like to wear a poppy?””she said. “If you want to put a dollar or something in the pot, that’s fine, but you don’t have to. That’s up to you.”
The legion had a distribution day last Saturday and will be doing another this Friday in Rossland and Saturday at the mall in Trail.
The service in Remembrance Day starts at 10 a.m. in the Legion Hall.
She said that everybody’s welcome. School kids will read some poems and they also want to encourage the local scouts to come out.
“We have just a short half hour service in the legion, then we line up and march to the cenotaph to have the reasong of the men who died in the wars and the laying of the poppies,” she said. “That’s at 11 a.m., but we try to encourage people to come to our service in the legion.”
After the parade and wreath laying, the legion will have some entertainment and lunch for a donation.