Remembrance Day Across the District
November 10, 2023
Students and staff across the Langley School District spent time this week remembering, honouring and learning about Canadian veterans and the roles they have played in our country’s history and in shaping our future.
At Blacklock Fine Arts Elementary, students have spent time learning about Canada’s roles in past wars and imagining what life must have been like for soldiers during the two world wars. On Wednesday, which was also National Indigenous Veterans Day, an all-school assembly was held, in which students danced, sang, and read letters they’d written from soldiers’ perspectives.
As well, students honoured Indigenous veterans with drumming and a song, led by Aboriginal support worker Carlyn Andres. To learn more about Canada’s Indigenous veterans, click here.
“The ceremony today was really embedded in the concept of peace,” said Blacklock Fine Arts Elementary principal Susanna Eppich. “And how can we find peace, and that peace begins with every individual.”
Eppich noted that the assembly was a continuation of years of learning for some of the school oldest students.
“Our Grade 5s, who will be leaving us this year to go to H.D. Stafford, they have been in six Remembrance Day ceremonies, and so their deep learning started back in Kindergarten,” she added. “And as they’ve moved through, we build on that every year.”
Across the District, other learning around Remembrance Day took place. At Walnut Grove Secondary, students and staff in the print shop took a hands-on approach to honouring Canada’s veterans by creating pop-up banners for schools across the District.
At Langley Secondary, students and staff took time to not only honour Canada’s veterans, specifically the country’s Indigenous veterans as well as women who served important roles in wartimes past, but also to acknowledge and learn about some more current international conflicts, especially ones that have led families to come to Langley as newcomers.
“Unique to LSS is the families and students that are struggling because they are impacted by world events today, current events. And refugees that have lived the experience of war time and have seen things that we wouldn’t be accustomed to,” said LSS principal Diane Smillie.
During the school presentation, Smillie reminded students and staff that support was available to those who needed it. To access community supports, click here.
At Langley Fine Arts School, Grade 11 and 12 dance majors collaborated with the schools chamber choice for a joint presentation (see slideshow below), while Grade 4 and 5 students performed a rendition of In Flanders Fields.
See the slideshow below for Remembrance Day photos from across the District: