Calgary’s Field of Crosses returns this November to honour the southern Albertans who served Canada in several conflicts.
The annual event, called the Eleven Days of Remembrance, will run from Nov. 1 to 11 at 200 Memorial Drive NW, made evident by 3,700 white crosses, each bearing the name of a fallen soldier from this part of the province and across the country.
For just under two weeks, the display will be accompanied by a series of events, including daily sunrise and sunset ceremonies, a special Night of Lights tribute on Nov. 10, and, finally, the Remembrance Day service on Nov. 11.
All events are free to the public, including the memorial component, which will remain open 24 hours a day. The concluding service will be projected on on-site video screens and livestreamed on Global TV for those who cannot attend in person.
With the end of daylight saving time, chairman Sean Libin said the later sunrise time of around 8:30 a.m. might make it understandably hard for residents to get to work on time. At the same time, the later sunset ceremony times might better suit more people’s schedules.
Libin said the variety of daily themes is meant to entice people to stop by multiple times, not just for the statutory holiday, but especially on that day.
“There’s a lot of people that get November 11 off and don’t do anything with it,” he said.
“That’s unacceptable. You have to take a moment and take pause to realize how lucky we are to live and work where we do as safely as we live in Calgary, because it wasn’t going that way.”
Nearly two decades since the ceremony began
Now in its 18th year, the Field of Crosses began in 2009 after philanthropist Murray McCann saw a similar memorial in the southern United States. Calgary’s version first started with 300 names.
Libin said it has “grown exponentially since,” particularly in the number of honoured Albertan soldiers, which has increased by the thousands, with 120 of the crosses commemorating the 120,000 heroes across Canada.
As a self-sustaining registered charity, he said demand for volunteers and funding has also grown. Libin explained that volunteers make the crosses and events happen each year, and that both they and attendees gain something from the ceremonies.
“It’s volunteers who have come together,” he said.
“Each volunteer who participates or every person who attends a ceremony, they feel a little piece of ownership of it, and so the ownership of this has grown exponentially as well, and we’re really proud of it.”
With this, Libin said that they have had to add more speakers, video screens, and agenda items over the years, including the classroom portion, which invites roughly 2,500 middle-school-aged children to learn about Canada’s military history.
“I think it’s important that we remind and teach youth about the act of remembrance,” he said.
“Because someone once told me, if you allow people to forget, they will.”
Libin said that as the number of living veterans dwindles each year, it’s become easier for new generations to be unaware of the sacrifices that were made to make the country what it is today. No matter someone’s age, he said that he hopes the event reminds people to look back.
