Keith Boehmer, historian with the Okanagan Military Museum. The Field of Crosses will be on display in City Park from Nov. 2 to 11, 2021.

(CARLI BERRY / iNFOnews.ca)

Kelowna's Remembrance Day Field of Crosses is a display that serves as a stark reminder of what happens when society collapses.

Now in its fourth year, the Royal Canadian Legion, The Rotary Club of Kelowna, and Okanagan Military Museum Society, have organized the Field of Crosses to commemorate and recognize the sacrifice so many people made from the Kelowna area during the First World War, Second World War, Korean War and Afghanistan War.

The field contains the names of 227 soldiers.

“Each cross represents the real heartbreak and real failure of society as well. I think we’ve done pretty well of avoiding similar bloodshed… but I think we need this as a memory of how real and how bad it can be when we don’t get along with one another when we move from a dispute to a war time scenario, this is what the result is,” said project lead Rick Potter, past president with the Rotary Club of Kelowna.

The official opening ceremony is at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, Nov. 2, and during the week the public and local schools is welcome to visit the field and pay their respects. An evening ceremony on Nov. 10 at 5 p.m. will serve as a formal recognition and the public is invited to attend, but they’re not hoping for huge crowds, Rotary president Steve Thomson said

“It’s the sacrifice that people made for us to give us the quality of life that we have, the sacrifices that people continue to make... for the country and it’s important to remember that, that’s why we’ve been seeing increasing crowds of participation in Remembrance Day ceremonies across the country,” Thomson said.

The last few years the crosses have been well received, especially since there hasn’t been a memorial due to the pandemic, Potter said.

Middle school students will also visit the crosses as part of a museum project where they research more about the individual lives of the soldiers.

The Field of Crosses on display in Kelowna's City Park for Remembrance Day.

(CARLI BERRY / iNFOnews.ca)

The visual of having the crosses laid out in a similar way to cemeteries in Europe adds a connection to the students. It’s trying to put names and faces to those on the cenotaph so the community can associate the names with the wars as they no longer have the living memories of veterans, said Keith Boehmer, historian with the Okanagan Military Museum.

This year there won’t be a Remembrance Day service on Nov. 11 in Kelowna.

A Remembrance Day ceremony will be held in Peachland at Cenotaph Park at 11:30 a.m.

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