Residents of Toronto’s Upper Beaches have spotted notices with enormous, painted poppies placed on the front lawns of particular properties south of Gerrard Street East and north of Kingston Road over the past few days.
It’s all a part of A Walk to Remember, a Remembrance Day school project created by the students at Notre Dame High School on Malvern Avenue under the direction of Evan Smith, a history-geography teacher.
According to Smith, “We’ve found 23 residences near our school Notre Dame where a soldier served in either WW1 or WW2 and didn’t return home.”
Each of the signs displays a banner with the name of the soldier who went to war and never again saw the tree-lined, Beach-area side streets because they lost their life overseas while serving in the Armed Forces.
“I’m standing in the doorway where the soldier left home for the final time… that road they walked down, the sidewalk they left… it was really emotional,” Smith said of requesting residents for their permission to post these placards.
The scanned QR code on each sign reveals information about the soldier along with archival photos and documents including in some cases, letters exchanged between family and the military.
The eldest of five brothers who all served, Private Albert Leon Cleverdon, is recognised on one of the poppies placed in a lawn on Malvern Avenue. On January 3, 1918, Albert was the first to pass away. The current homeowner of what once was the Cleverdon residence, Alyssa Milot, told Global News that while she is honoured to know the history of her home, imagining a mother – in this case, Kate Cleverdon – watching all five of her sons head to war, is difficult to comprehend.
As the mother of two boys, ages three and five, Milot said, “It guts me to think about that reality.”
The poppy sign and the walking tour idea, according to Milot, sparked age-appropriate conversations with her sons.
“It was a really cool opportunity for me to teach my boys about the World Wars – especially my five-year-old who is interested and inquiring – but it’s a hard conversation to have,” she said.
A community is now connected to the past by a history lesson that uses interactive elements to remember dozens of young men who were sent to fight in foreign countries but never returned.
Walking tour to remember World Wars I and II troops in Upper Beaches
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