Chilliwack Museum and Archives -- Home
WELCOME TO THE Poppy Project
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The Poppy Project is an interactive exhibit showing the home addresses of people from Chilliwack who died in the Great War and in the Second World War. The maps show the addresses of the men, or their families, before they left for Europe. For people today, the Poppy Maps create a connection, through geography and history, into the past. In this way, we can be linked to the lives of those who sacrificed themselves in two world wars that had such an impact on Canadians in the 20th century.
Most of the men whose names appear in the Chilliwack War Memorial lived in Chilliwack, but some did not. This is because names were often added to War Memorials in towns or cities where soldiers signed up; other names were added to War Memorials if names were submitted when the Honour Rolls were being compiled shortly after the wars. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that some of the names on the Memorial will not appear on the map, because there is no historical record of their presence in Chilliwack.
The creation of these maps involved many different resources, such as tax records, attestation papers, census data, maps, burial records, and The Chilliwack Progress records (see the links page for annotations on the resources). In general, the addresses shown here accurately indicate the location where each man, or his family, lived before they left for the battlefront.
Many of the addresses have been changed over time, property lots were subdivided into smaller lots in the Township, and house addresses changed from 1914 and 1939. However, the legal property descriptions of properties in the past can be traced to property descriptions today, so while they may have been subdivided into smaller lots, the property area where Chilliwack’s soldiers lived is the same. - Pierce Smith, 2014
View Maps:
Photograph credits: [Top: 104th Regiment outside the Princess Street drill hall, 2014. Chilliwack Museum and Archives, P884] [ Top left: Pierce Smith at the Chilliwack cenotaph, 2014. Shannon Bettles, Chilliwack Museum and Archives]
Chilliwack Museum and Archives (c) 2014
