General Chat

We were lucky here for Remembrance Day today.

It was cloudy with a few sunny periods, not too cold, and dry. The Parades and Services at the Cenotaphs around this area are just ending. The veterans have had a decent day. Now they can spend the rest of the day at the Legion or other places with their friends.

Other parts of the province were not so lucky, with forecasts of freezing rain and black ice. Everywhere else in Canada was as usual a button your coat and keep warm sort of day.


A special feature of Remembrance Day across Canada this year was recognising a No Stone Left Alone campaign, where school children and cadets clean gravestones of veterans and leave a poppy behind. One special place in BC was called Anyox way in the north.

It was a thriving mining town before WW1 but is now a ghost town where no-one lives. But there is a Veterans Cemetery where there are 15 graves scattered among the trees. A group of Ranger Cadets from a "nearby" town went there earlier in the week, cleaned all the graves, laid a poppy on each one, then had a little service where the 14 names that were known were read out loud. The 15th grave had no name on the headstone.

Good to know that the graves are tended Sylvia, especially where there are no longer amy locals to do it. Just googled Anyox ( curious as ever) and found this
https://www.iheartradio.ca/ez-rock/ez-rock-kelowna/shows/junior-rangers-help-save-wwi-veterans-graves-in-b-c-ghost-town-1.10209445

That sounds a lovely thing to do Sylvia. I wonder if there are any relatives of the graves living nearby who will be grateful for what the children are doing.

Rose ............... I saw the report on the TV, hadn't seen the written report.

It's worthy to note that Anyox is about 60 km south-east of Stewart where the Junior Rangers are from, by boat. There are no road or trail connections, just wilderness separating them.!


Ann .................... Nobody lives around except the occasional prospector or trapper around there. It's all just wilderness.

Anyox was at the head of one fiord-like inlet, while Stewart is at the head of a much larger fiord-like inlet to the north. Cruise ships on the Alaska run often stop at Stewart. There is hardly anything left of Anyox now although there used to be over 3,000 people living there in the 1920s. It was what is called a company town, so when the mine closed in the mid-1930s, everyone left. Forest fires over the years have burnt everything.

There are a people still living who were born in Anyox, or whose parents were born there, and presumably could be related to one of those men. But who knows where they are living now?? I think that is why the graves largely disappeared into the encroaching forest. It was a good job that the graves were ringed with stone and had stone headstones, not wood which was more common back then as it was easier to get.