November 10, 2020

MACTIER ON TRACK FOR MEMORABLE SALUTE TO SOLDIERS

MACTIER — There’s no last minute landscaping or army cadet vigil tonight, as two local legions ready for Remembrance Day this eve.

Bruce Henn and Shirley Ruttan — presidents of their respective Royal Canadian Legions in MacTier and Bracebridge — may differ in their commemorations tomorrow, but their sentiments are the same in this unusual year.

Ruttan said they held their remembrance day Nov. 1 — and had to change course and move inside at the last hour due to rain.

Their small private service planned secretly for the downtown Memorial Park was called off due to weather.

And tonight’s Muskoka Pioneers 2250 Army Cadets guard duty there won’t take place due to COVID-19.

It’s also the reason the by-invitation-only ceremony was inside due to a limitation in numbers.

So a dozen-and-a-half members and about six veterans held a “short and sweet” discrete gathering to mark the occasion.

They were joined by a couple soldiers from Base Borden.

Ruttan said she will go downtown and lay a wreath alone in the morning and that at 11 a.m. as usual Shirley Campbell will slip in and place a wreath on behalf of her late mom who was a Silver Cross mother.

The service will be posted on their website and Facebook page at 11 a.m. and re-run on YourTV later in the day, along with the Huntsville and Gravenhurst services.

Meanwhile in MacTier, Henn says they will be outside, where he says he doesn’t know how many will show up for their private do.

All he knows is that last year at this time he and other branch members and volunteers were busy at dusk putting the finishing touches on a new cenotaph that cost the branch about $40,000 with a little help from Veterans Affairs — but none from the Township of Georgian Bay.

This year it’s different in more ways than one.

In addition to limitations on size and not as many wreaths there will be no lunch and fewer regular forces army from Base Borden instead of a busload.

But one Henn and the community will rally around, especially with 149 names of community members etched in stone carvings by the Sahnatien brothers.

He will lay a wreath for his brother Anthony Hammond, a Canadian Forces veteran who died four months ago of a stroke, after six tours of duty in Afghanistan.

And if the weather holds on — even for under an hour — they can stand outside where they will lay man less wreaths.

But it will still be a reverential remembrance day.

One the small west Muskoka village is proud to rally around each year — even for a few minutes.

It’s part of what keeps MacTier on track for next year.