‘Lives on in all of us’: Minnedosa residents embrace veteran banners and poppy blanket on Remembrance Day with pride

CTV’s Joseph Bernacki travels to Minnedosa to see how residents of that community are honouring veterans on Remembrance Day.

As Minnedosa resident Gwen Usick looked up at her veteran father’s banner on 2 Ave SE, a feeling of honour fills her in the small town.

“It’s a sense of pride,” Usick said. “Pride for the community, the service that he gave, and it lives on in all of us.”

Usick’s father, Arthur Bayes, served in the Canadian military in the 1940s. Bayes’ face looks over the street on a banner amongst dozens of others in the town.

Usick is proud to know his military service and others will be on display for years to come.

“These people were all from our community and they gave so that we could have freedom,” Usick said.

Her father, four uncles and a second cousin are just six of 143 veterans displayed on banners spread out in the small Westman Valley community of a little more than 2,700 residents.

Seventy-three double-sided banners have been raised honouring veterans from Minnedosa and the surrounding area.

“Being a small town, of course, the word got around and it just mushroomed after that,” said John Mendrikis, past president of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 138 in Minnedosa.

Mendrikis said legion members were inspired eight years ago to raise banners after hearing of a similar project taking place in Sackville, a small town in New Brunswick.

The first 50 banners were hung in 2019, and the project quickly grew. Mendrikis said they believe Minnedosa was the first municipality in Manitoba to bring this concept here.

“We were the forerunner in doing this type of project because over the next few years, there was a lot of communities that contacted us to see how we’re doing, what we did,” Mendrikis said.

“Recently, of course, there were the communities of Russell, Binscarth and Birtle, erected them for the first time in their communities. It’s a growing thing in Manitoba and it is very appropriate.”

It’s not just in the lead-up to Remembrance Day that they are displayed in the community. Mendrikis said the banners are hung in the spring and remain up for half of the year before they are taken down after November 11.

Minnedosa resident Dennis Pearson reached out to the legion to honour the two generations that came before him.

“We didn’t go because we wanted to; we went because we had to,” Pearson said as he looked at his father’s and grandfather’s banners in town.

“The area and the town, the families have a lot of pride in what our parents and grandparents did.”

Pearson still carries veteran artifacts from his father Arthur, who served during the Second World War and his grandfather Earnest White, who survived the line of duty during the First World War.

“He was in the 43rd Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada,” Pearson said about his grandfather.

“He was 32 years old when he signed up in December of 1915. He was mustard gassed at Passchendaele. There was a lot that stood up here when the need was done.”

‘It was always a dream’: poppy blanket on full display on town’s cenotaph

That’s not the only way Minnedosa is honouring the past. Over the last five years, the community has draped a poppy blanket onto the town’s cenotaph.

Minnedosa resident Lorna Hislop said it was a dream to make it after inspiration from one she saw made in England.

In 2020 she reached out to a team of volunteers, including Usick, to help her knit 4,600 crocheted poppies.

“I have people as far as Nova Scotia contacted me and said, ‘We’ve seen your poppy blanket and we absolutely love it,’” Hislop said.

“The word spread and I had people from all over Minnedosa and the area and my mom, who was 85 years old in Saskatchewan, decided to make poppies.”

“It was very near and dear to my heart to be able to see something like that come to life,” Usick said.

It took the volunteers three days to make the blanket and it returns to the cenotaph on Minnedosa’s Main Street every November.

Hislop said it’s been very gratifying to see her community come together to honour those who have come before her from the valley.

“We have all taken the time to actually stop and think about what they have done for us,” Hislop said.

“We’re so very grateful for it.”

Mendrikis said they are in contact with more families over the potential to raise more veterans’ banners in the near future. The Minnedosa Royal Canadian Legion Branch 138 turned 86 years old this year.