Vancouver eyes four-year project to restore almost 7,400 military graves
Credit to Author: Dan Fumano| Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 02:00:45 +0000
When retired major Gino Simeoni visited the well-maintained war cemetery in Agira, Sicily last year, he was struck by a thought as he placed a small Canadian flag on the grave of the youngest of the 490 Canadian servicemen buried there, a man of barely 17.
“It hit me, quite a lot,” Simeoni said this week. “‘I thought: ‘What a waste. What an absolute, utter waste.’”
Simeoni has had similar thoughts, he said, walking among the graves of more than 12,000 veterans buried in Vancouver’s Mountain View cemetery, one of Canada’s largest military burial sites.
Military records show that dozens of the Canadian soldiers who died during the First and Second World Wars and are buried in Mountain View were only 18 or 19 years old.
“Some of them are even younger than that, they just lied about their age so they could enlist,” said Simeoni. “You look at someone, and then you wonder: I wonder what his life would have been?”
The City of Vancouver is now looking at a four-year, $2.7-million project to restore almost 7,400 military graves in the “Fields of Honour” of Mountain View Cemetery, the only city-owned cemetery. It stretches over a 40-hectare expanse of land in East Vancouver.
City staff are seeking council’s approval for an agreement with Veterans Affairs Canada for a four-year project to restore 7,373 military markers and install new foundations. The project’s $2.7-million budget would be covered by Veterans Affairs Canada.
The effort of restoring the graves is an important endeavour for the simple reason that “we must not forget,” said Simeoni, the B.C. branch president of the Last Post Fund, a national non-profit that provides funeral and burial assistance for Canadian veterans. Last Post Fund is not involved directly with the restoration effort at Mountain View, but the organization has worked in recent years to add more than 800 markers to previously unmarked veterans’ graves at the Vancouver cemetery.
Dozens of Canadian soldiers who died during the two world wars and who are buried in Mountain View were only 18 or 19 years old. ‘You look at someone, and then you wonder: I wonder what his life would have been?’ says Gino Simeoni, B.C. branch president of the Last Post Fund.
The city report on next week’s council agenda describes the new project’s background. About 10,000 of the veterans’ graves in Mountain View were previously marked with sloping military markers on granite foundations, the report says. But in the 1980s, thousands of upright monuments across Mountain View were laid flush with the ground, this week’s report says, “in an attempt to reduce the long-term maintenance costs.” At that time, Veterans Affairs Canada approved similar work on the military graves there, to remove the granite foundations and set the markers flush with the ground.
The city and Veterans Affairs restored almost 2,000 of those military markers between 2006 and 2011. Now, they are looking to restore the rest of the monuments to their original upright position.
The City of Vancouver and Veterans Affairs both said no one would be available for an interview while the agreement has not yet been signed.
But the city sent an emailed statement, saying: “The work will improve the esthetic of two large areas within the cemetery, demonstrating the City and Veteran Affairs Canada’s commitment to respectfully commemorate the veterans who are laid to rest in the Fields of Honour.”
The Fields of Honour at Mountain View are “an important part of the city,” said a local military historian, Cameron Cathcart, “but not many people know about it.”
“It’s important that citizens of Vancouver know that this place exists and that it’s well worth a visit, just to be more familiar with our history,” said Cathcart, president of the Royal United Services Institute-Vancouver which conducts the Vimy Day Commemoration in Mountain View every April.
“All of these fellows buried there are a part of our Canadian history, and British Columbian history.”
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