Video by Justin Lam
Multimedia by Abby Hughes
By Marco Sasso
With Toronto still under Ontario’s modified Stage 2 COVID-19 restrictions, schools across the Greater Toronto Area’s Remembrance Day plans have shifted from mass assemblies to abbreviated class memorials.
Kimberley Junior Public School cancelled its in-person memorial assembly and related events. To compensate, teacher Kate Cullen said each class will create poppies made of paper plates and sticks and insert them into the school’s front lawn.
Meanwhile Langstaff Secondary School will not be building off of last year’s achievement — an assembly supplemented by a walk through “mini-museum” created by 10th grade history students.
With almost half of its student body learning online, history teacher Stephanie Campbell said teachers are posting memorial videos on students’ virtual classrooms. There will also be a poetry reading over the school’s PA system for in-person participants.
“We can’t even bring them together outside because it’s too many of them and difficult to keep the social distancing,” Campbell said.
No Stone Left Alone Memorial Foundation spokesperson Michelle Koch said this year’s Remembrance Day changes could open up more ways to hold individualized memorials across the country in the future.
“In Winnipeg, for instance, our organizer couldn’t have the students out, so he just reached out to the community and said ‘I’ll provide poppies, you get in touch with me, and you and your family can go and lay poppies with your children by yourself and honour veterans that way,” she said.
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The City of Toronto announced that its commemorations will be virtual and available through the city’s website and social media. Toronto is set to enter the red control category of Ontario’s new colour-coded COVID-19 management plan on Saturday.
