A six-year-old boy from Dieppe, N.B. got a medal of his own after painting a touching gift for a local veteran.
The gift exchange started because Kovi Theriault had been learning about the importance of Nov. 11 in school. He felt like he needed to do something more for his very first Remembrance Day ceremony on Friday.
Kovi wanted to make sure veterans knew just how much they were appreciated on Remembrance Day.
“I just thought that I would like to make them smile,” Kovi told CTV Atlantic. “So I decided to do a painting.”
“His whole goal was to give [the painting] to a veteran because it’s his first ceremony,” said Kovi’s father, Jean Michel Theriault.
After the ceremony, Kovi chose to give his painting to Art Cuthbertson, a veteran who served from 1950 to 1975. Cuthberson is now the first vice-president of the Dieppe Military Veterans’ Association.
“I just gave it and he thanked me and he gave me a hug,” said Kovi.
“We became sort of instant friends,” Cuthbertson told CTV Atlantic. On Sunday, he returned Kovi’s gesture by giving him a medal from the Dieppe Military Veterans Association.
Cuthbertson thinks the painting is an encouraging sign for the future. “It’s nice to see children grow up knowing the history of the problems we had. It’s nice that they can learn these lessons of what we went through,” he said.
Kovi added: “We need to remember what they did for us a few years ago.”
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore
