Surrounded by trees and buffered from the elements, the cenotaph at Springwater Provincial Park is absolutely silent on this Friday morning.
Workers have just wrapped up preparing the site for Monday’s Remembrance Day ceremony, having installed displays of knitted and crocheted poppies and filled urns with evergreen limbs and bouquets of poppies.
Scott Thomas, the park’s superintendent, was overseeing the activities, much like he has every year for the past 10 years or so since the ceremony returned to the park, following a decades-long hiatus.
He thinks it’s the ideal place to commemorate the occasion.
“This is a very special place to observe Remembrance Day,” he said. “It’s in the middle of a forest, there are no cars, no traffic, no noises.
“It’s silent. The only thing you hear is the wind in the trees.”
That silence, he said, adds immeasurably to the aura of the day. It affords attendees the opportunity to connect with their emotions and their memories in peace, providing them with a tranquil atmosphere to take in the true weight of the day.
According to a post on Ontario War Memorials, a blog curated by amateur historian Tim Laye with input from local historian Les Stewart, the ‘Vespra Boys’ cenotaph at Springwater was created through an act of kindness by Dr. Edmund Zavitz, Ontario’s first chief forester.
Zavitz was instrumental in establishing Ontario's first demonstration forest near Midhurst, just outside Barrie.
When 18 men from Vespra Township, now Springwater Township, died in the First World War, Zavitz arranged to pay tribute to them by erecting a monument in this forest.
Hand-built in 1929 by local men Robert Mills and Harvey Spence, the cenotaph was the central focus of the Vespra Legion Branch 149, started in 1929 and de-commissioned in 1974 due to dwindling membership.
“The cenotaph was built before it was a provincial park,” Thomas said. “Vespra didn’t have a town square, which is where they were usually built, so they built it in the park.”
Visitors to the park for this year’s ceremony will notice two particularly large displays of knitted and crocheted poppies, one on each side of the cenotaph.
Hand-done by a couple dozen folks, the majority of the poppies on display were donated after their makers read a story in BarrieToday last year about a local woman who spent hours making hundreds of poppies for the cenotaph.
Inspired by the Cambridge Poppy Project, a community art in the southern Ontario municipality that turns various landmarks into Remembrance Day icons, Anten Mills resident Joan Gannon originally started making the poppies a few years ago.
She thought her poppy project would be a perfect addition to a local ceremony, but she didn’t know who to contact.
Gannon reached out to Springwater Coun. Brad Thompson, who put her in touch with park officials who okayed the idea. She never thought talking about it with the media would generate so much interest.
“I gave up counting there’s so many,” Gannon said when asked how many poppies she’s received. “But it’s at least 600. I’ve gotten hundreds.
“My sister in Toronto taught herself to crochet just so she could contribute,” she added.
One person who donated her handiwork in September apologized to Gannon for taking so long to get the work to her.
“She said she was terribly sorry for taking so long but she read the story and then forgot and it just slipped her mind,” Gannon said. “She said she only remembered recently and made them before she forgot again.”
Gannon said the outpouring of support was unexpected, but not surprising.
“I didn’t ask for help, people just offered it,” she said. “That’s what Canadians have always done.”
The Remembrance Day ceremony at Springwater Provincial Park will begin at 10:30 a.m. at the cenotaph. Ample parking is available.
