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A week ahead of Remembrance Day, there's a special display to be seen at Kelowna's City Park. The names that are displayed in rock at the cenotaph, are now represented on white crosses, row upon row. The year of their death and their ages are displayed on each cross. What jumps out for many who take time to observe them, is their youth at the time they laid down their lives for us.
"94 kids 25 and under are represented by those crosses," remarked Legion Past President Jim McCaffery. "27 of them are 25-years-of-age and under. "McCaffery said he hopes it helps school-age kids get a better feel for what happened to these young people. "These kids are just like their older brothers and sisters and they went overseas."
"These are our boys," said Michael Loewen who MC'd the event to unveil the field of crosses Monday. "When you see the names on that cenotaph, and you see those names duplicated on those crosses and you know that these were all lads from the Kelowna area, it just literally brings it home."
"These are real people," said Carol Eamer who brought the idea to Kelowna modelled after a similar, but much larger field of crosses in Calgary. "These are real people who had brothers, sisters. There are several sets of brothers whose names are on the crosses and there are cousins and there are high school buddies that all went off together, and a lot of them didn't come back."
The Field of Crosses was opened to the public today after a ceremony that came completer with a military colour guard. The display will be in place until November 12.
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