Who were they?
The Cenotaph Story
Reputed to have been built in 5 days, and sometimes referenced as the first cenotaph in Canada, we set out to find the truth behind the rumours.
Image Source: City of Vancouver Archives – Public Domain.
“Their Name Shall Live For Evermore” – unveiled at 11:00 November 11, 1920, only five days after its creation and just 8 hours after the Cenotaph in London, England – due to timezone differences.
Remembrance
South Vancouver Veterans Council Society organizes the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Cenotaph in Memorial Park South.
There is an order of service which is deeply buried in tradition and timing, our group chooses to honour that tradition in the style of service we offer each year.
Our order of service very closely matches that of November 11, 1920.
You can learn more about our society on our sister website
The Cenotaph
South Vancouver’s community cenotaph has represented its Great War sacrifices for over a century.
War records hold the facts of service and family memories hold the stories of the men and women who died in, or survived, the Great War.
While we started by identifying some of those veterans, We wanted to know more about who built the cenotaph for the first Armistice Day service in 1920.
At the time of the unveiling that November there were no names on, nor time for engraving any onto, the Cenotaph, but a list was kept – we just don’t know where, so we started our own which you will find here.
Their names
Of the 309 First World War graves at Mountain View Cemetery only some of them were residents of South Vancouver – a municipality in its own right at the time.
Many died after coming home from the war in Europe; from war-sustained injuries, or the ‘Spanish’ Flu which arrived in 1919. Others many years later after helping to build the South Vancouver Neighbourhood.
There was no repatriation of the dead. Some were never found, while others are buried in cemeteries in places like France and Belgium where their names are carefully kept.