Chilliwack Museum and Archives -- Home -- About the Project
The Poppy Project
Each day the cairn endures the elements -- sun, rain, snow, heat, cold. It stands before us
unwavering as its record of Chilliwack’s Great War and Second World War reads row by row. Names, each one connected to this community in some fashion. Residents with roots deep into this community and others whose family lived here, yet they themselves may never have seen the sun shine upon Chilliwack’s mountaintops.
The memorial is a record of those who lived in Chilliwack’s community of villages, of those who watched the pace of the Fraser or Chilliwack Rivers, swam at Cultus Lake or climbed to the top of Mt. Cheam. Did they ever look out across the valley and see their town, their place from a distance? This was their town, this is where they lived but did not pass. Instead most fell in distant places, far from home; their memory all that was left to love and remember.
The Poppy Project sets forth to place upon Chilliwack’s landscape a record of where these fellows lived, where they chose to share their lives with those within their company. With friends and family, perhaps their children or parents. The project reminds us that yet again these are more than names upon a bleak column rising skyward; they are real fellows, real people whose time was short-lived but remembered by all in a community that sought to recognize them in the finest location they could provide.
At Veterans Memorial Park you will find Chilliwack’s War Memorial, a record of 99 soldiers of the Great War and 85 of the Second World War. Remember them well, remember them often for they are as much the kin of a community as they are to their own. With each poppy upon our chest, with each note from the bugle or the wind of the pipes, we will remember them.
- Paul Ferguson, Military Historian
About the Project
The Poppy Project was conceived, researched and completed by University of the Fraser Valley history department work-study student Pierce Smith under the supervision of Dr. Molly Ungar in 2014. The Poppy Project builds upon previous research on Chilliwack's War Memorial undertaken by Paul Ferguson, accessible on the Chilliwack War Memorial website as well as in the Paul Ferguson fonds at the Chilliwack Archives. This website is created and hosted by the Chilliwack Museum and Archives, the embedded Google map is maintained by the UFV history department.
Learn more or share with us:
We welcome the public or family members to contact us with further information or to let us know if you have additional or different information than is presented here. We also acknowledge that there may be names missing from the map as they were not recorded on the cenotaph, and we would like to keep track of this information should you wish to share with us. Your information will help us to update the maps and keep them as current as possible. We hope that the Chilliwack community will be a valuable resource in adding to, and remembering the names on Chilliwack’s War Memorial.
Chilliwack Museum and Archives: info@chilliwackmuseum.ca or (604)-795-9255
Chilliwack Museum and Archives (c) 2014
