Honouring Remembrance Day
Each year, Crescent School’s students, faculty and staff gather to mark Remembrance Day with special guests, music and a time of silence to honour the sacrifices that Canadians have made for peace.
At our Remembrance Day 2018 assembly on November 6, our guest speaker was Christopher Sweeney P’18, Chair of The Vimy Foundation of Canada. He shared a message about the importance of doing what we can in our communities to support remembrance. On behalf of the Class of 2018, he donated an oak sapling to Crescent that has an exceptional lineage: it grew from a tree that grew from an acorn collected in 1917 by a soldier on the Vimy Ridge battlefield. It is one of 100 “Vimy Oaks” being planted in Canada, while another 100 oaks will be planted at the Vimy Memorial in France. Mr. Sweeney also donated two copies of the Vimy Foundation book, They Fought In Colour, for Crescent’s library.
The assembly featured music by the Crescent choirs, a reading of “100 Words for 100 Years” by the Middle School drama students and the piping of “The Flowers of the Forest” by Peter Osborne P’14, ’19.
As part of Crescent’s Remembrance Day traditions, the Grade 3s gathered outside after the assembly with Lower School teacher Gordon Wotherspoon to learn about Crescent’s war memorial.
Crescent’s Remembrance Day connections will continue, as the Crescent School Choir travels to France, Belgium and the Netherlands from November 7 to 17. The choir will perform choir at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and at the Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, at the Menin Gate, and at a special ceremony at the Arras Memorial marking the centenary of the World War I armistice
