CORNWALL, Ontario – The Westlake Brothers Souvenir Association will be coming to Cornwall on Monday, July 22 for a ceremony of remembrance.
The group is an association of French teens and youth from Normandy, France and this year, they are planning a trip across parts of Ontario and Quebec to remember the 47,000 Canadians who died in World War II.
The group will be laying a wreath at the Cornwall Cenotaph at 3 p.m. followed by a walk down Second St. to the Cornwall Legion. At the Legion, over the course of four hours, they will be reading 5,000 of the 47,000 names of those Canadians who died in the Second World War.
Cornwall will be the third stop on their trip, which will start in London, ON, before going onto Toronto, then Cornwall, Ottawa, Montreal, QC, Beauharnois, QC, Longueuil, QC Shawinigan, QC, Lévis, QC, Québec, QC, Beauceville, QC and Montmagny, QC.
“Each of the ceremonies, is organized by young people (from 15 to 23) and/ or children from 8 to 15-years-old); they write more or less all the texts and read all the speeches (some of them in English, they direct the ceremonies, they read The Act of Remembrance and The Promise of Remembrance,” reads a press release from the Westlake Brothers Souvenir Association. “They place flowers (whicha re in fact paper poppies made by themselves) and also shingles from the beaches all around Juno Beach.”
In all, there will be 27 French youths taking part in the trip and conducting 10 ceremonies in honour of the Canadian soldiers who helped set them free.
To learn more about the Westlake Brothers Souvenir Association, please see https://www.westlakebrothers.free.fr
