COVID concerns may have thwarted Penticton's usual Remembrance Day gathering at the Trade and Convention Centre. But it didn't stop a couple hundred mostly-masked, mostly socially-distanced folks from getting together anyway at Veteran's Memorial Park to honour veterans of wars past and present.
The ceremony, conducted at the same spot local firefighters typically hold their own, smaller service, kicked off at 10:45 am and ended approximately 45 minutes later. And it featured many of the trappings regularly seen at the Convention Centre, apart from an array of speeches.
Indeed, there was just one speaker during the entire event -- Royal Canadian Legion Branch 40 past prez and poppy chair Bob Sudbury. And he handled his master of ceremony duties admirably, even with the expected glitches a last-minute location rearrangement would spur.
But it was his comments on future Remembrance Day services that really got the crowd going. Sudbury is a fan of permanently shifting the ceremony from the Convention Centre to the Park, and many of those in attendance applauded their agreement when he twice mentioned it during today's event.
"I think we got a very good response when I said this is where the event should be every year," he'd say later. "It's a cenotaph. It's not some piece of wood that we haul around in a truck and an hour later is gone. The wreaths will still be here tomorrow for everyone to see."
One of today's attendees was Oliver, a Grade One student at Queen's Park Elementary. We spotted him gently placing a hand-painted rock at the base of the cenotaph during the wreath-laying finale. It was one of a couple dozen painted rocks from Oliver's Queen's Park class.
Oliver proudly told us that he and his classmates also recently learned how to "sing" O Canada in sign language. We suspect few in the crowd could legitimately make that claim.
Another of today's attendees was Fred MacDonald, a gentleman who garnered the biggest reaction of the day while placing his wreath.
MacDonald is 88 years old. He fought in the Korean War in the early 1950s.
This was his third Remembrance Day ceremony in Penticton. He lived on Vancouver Island prior to that, before his arthritis flared up and his daughter whisked him to the drier weather of the Okanagan.
"My brother was killed in that war," he began, bringing home the reason Remembrance Day is as important as it is. "He was a machine gunner in the Battle of Kapyong. He and his partner killed five enemy waves before they got them."
MacDonald didn't escape unscathed either.
"I got smashed up a bit…knocked around," he said with a wry smile. "I was driving a jeep, and someone didn’t like my jeep. So they shot me."
MacDonald never rose above the rank of private. But he didn't want to. "I didn't want to get any ranking," he laughed. "Then they'd give me more work to do."
But he does wish there were more Korean War veterans remaining in the Okanagan -- people who were there and with whom he could share experiences.
"Up here there's no Korean veterans. There's one other in Penticton, but he doesn't socialize much. There used to a lot of Korean War veterans in Penticton, but they've all died off.
"The Korean veterans are dying off faster than the World War II veterans. They used to spray our blankets and stuff with DDT to keep the mosquitoes and fleas away from us. And that's bad, bad stuff. It harms you later in life."
Like Sudbury, MacDonald preferred today's setting at the cenotaph to the Convention Centre, saying it's "much more meaningful to me."
Sadly, the vets -- and their admirers -- weren’t permitted to head back to the Legion for a drink and a bite afterward.
"The word came down from the Legion command," said Sudbury. "But I'm a bit mystified. We'd have only 50 people in there, we have people at the doors, and our seating is six feet apart. Whereas you can go to any bar in town and they'll be jammed full of people.
"This is the day we make a lot of money. The Ladies' Auxiliary made sandwiches for a hundred people."
Sudbury added that the Legion will reopen tomorrow and is ready for anyone who wants to take advantage.
