Middle West Pubnico, Nova Scotia
Since 2018, Crystal and John Grattan have been placing Canadian flags and hand-painted stones on Veterans’ graves and GPS marking them for easier future identification. This work is done alongside a local school and Legions at over 40 different cemeteries in Yarmouth County. The project has now grown to 1,700 Veterans’ graves. John and Crystal are now researching the Veterans in order to “put a face to a name” and have discovered 11 additional war dead from the area that will have their names added to the local cenotaph.
Crystal Grattan, alongside her husband John, have led and volunteered to honour Veterans’ graves in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, each Veterans’ Week since 2018. These efforts were conducted in conjunction with Maple Grove School’s Community Pride Club and, in recent years, the Grattans’ son (a Navy member) and other members of the Navy and local Army Unit.
Crystal hand-painted hundreds of stones with a poppy and a “Thank You” to place on the headstones, helped to place Canadian flags at these gravesites and helped her husband mark the graves with GPS for easy identification in the future. Crystal interacted with the Maple Grove School students and helped them in their volunteering, having stones for the students to place so that they could partake in honouring the Veterans. When the flags and stones ran out in 2021, Crystal and her husband paid for Canadian flag decals to be made that will serve as a more lasting recognition on the headstones.
After each Remembrance Day, Crystal and her husband returned to the gravesites to collect the flags for reuse the following year. Each year, the volunteers increased the number of graves found and marked, with the assistance of the GPS marking system. Creating this tradition encouraged local residents to join the volunteers as well.
The Grattans are working with the Yarmouth County Legions to purchase the flags for the gravesites. Over the past four years, Crystal has been consistently helping to achieve their goal of ensuring these Veterans are not forgotten and has helped to honour Veterans in a total of 24 cemeteries, as well as GPS marking 19 other cemeteries that are managed by the local Legion. Crystal and John Grattan have now identified and recorded 1,700 Veterans’ graves.
Using various sources, Crystal and John are now seeking out photographs and service information in order to “put a face to a name” and are presenting this information to the Pubnico Legion.
They also discovered 11 war dead from the West Pubnico area that are missing from the local cenotaph who will have their names added in the future.