The Royal Legion in Osoyoos has been preparing for Remembrance Day since September, decking their building with their new vibrant mural to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the poppy.
“It has brought a lot of attention to the building, that’s a given,” said Legion president Lyle Kent about the new mural. “People are stopping by to photograph it all the time and a huge amount of comments on it, all positive.”
The poppy campaign, which was launched last week, is aiming to raise $10,000-$12,000 this year. However, due to COVID-19, they cannot do any poppy tagging, said Kent.
“All the boxes are put in all the stores that allow us to do that, and that’s the way we raise our funds this time. And then we have a little bit of fundraisers going on in the building and stuff too,” explained Kent.
One of the fundraisers they’re doing this year for the poppy fund is offering to print out and laminate people’s vaccine passports for $5. The legion has already done over 200 for people.
“We bring [the code] up on a computer and bring them to size and laminate to a credit card size. People love that. And then when they come in, they just hand that in their card,” Kent said many older couples may have both their vaccine passports on one phone, making it hard for them to go into an establishment that requires the proof without the other.
As for the Remembrance Day ceremony this year, it will be quite scaled down and similar to last year which will take place at the Osoyoos Legion.
“We were talking about going to the Sonora Centre but there wasn’t enough room there for what we wanted to do and could only have 160 people max,” said Kent who explained they’ve decided to stick with having the ceremony at the Legion and stay within having 50 people, but also have the extra space upstairs.
Kent said last year they couldn’t even have 50 people so the increase in allowance is great for the ceremony. “So what we’ve done is we’ve created a list in the canteen here, which means members’ wives and caretakers get first come,” and then there will be room left for others to come as well before they max out with their capacity.
