'A true honour': No Stone Left Alone founder receives prestigious Governor General award

The No Stone Left Alone campaign leaves poppies on veterans' gravesites every November.

EDMONTON — Edmonton's Maureen Bianchini Purvis is 'astonished' to have received a Meritorious Service Decoration for her work as founder of the No Stone Left Alone Memorial Foundation.

The foundation honours the sacrifice of Canadian veterans by laying poppies at their headstones every November and educating children on their service.

She is one of 98 Canadians to receive the award.

"I don’t think I'd take it as personally a feather in my cap as for the thousands of volunteers that have helped make it happen," Bianchini Purvis told CTV News Edmonton. "So I think it’s a feather in all of No Stone Left Alone’s cap."

Bianchini Purvis founded the program in 2011 after being inspired by her dying mother – a WWII veteran – and after seeing so many veterans’ headstones unvisited.

“I think she’d be so thrilled, so proud,” said Bianchini Purvis when asked what her mother would think of the award.

“Not only for her namesake that I’ve done the program but for all her serving members that she served alongside. I think them all getting recognition would be the utmost importance to her and I’m just a child that will have done a great thing and my mother would be proud I’m sure.”

No Stone Left Alone has become a national movement and will mark its 10^th anniversary this November.