Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue merchants honour veterans with poppy wreaths

At a time when many businesses are gearing up for Christmas, Jennifer Buttars, an interior decorator and owner of JennBCreatiV, has been going non-stop creating storefront poppy decorations to show support for the legion and help them raise funds.

“It's a very short campaign,” she said. “I'm a business, so I want business at Christmas time, but I also think it's a time when we need to stop and reflect and be grateful.”

Buttars said the village merchants’ association applied for a grant from the city of Montreal to cover the costs of the decorations. They then went to work recruiting volunteers for a series of wreath making workshops at the local legion.

Their materials needed to be inexpensive and weatherproof, so Buttars used her creative skills and came up with a wreath using plastic plates, Styrofoam, tulle, pool noodles, and burlap.

“We felt that we could add a little colour to the street,” she said.

Nearly twenty of the large wreaths were assembled and hung along the main street in time for the Remembrance Day parade, held in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue last Sunday.

She said rallying behind veterans has been part of the town’s DNA since the Veterans’ Hospital was built to care for the wounded in the First World War.

“When the Veterans Hospital was transferred over to the provincial government a few years ago, we started to lose some of that,” she said. “There was a fear we were going to forget our history.”

Hawa said she’s proud of the merchants’ association for their work, and bringing the community together.

Legion director Rick Cartmel is also thankful for the support. He said the legion not only has a responsibility to remember the past, but care for the veterans of today.

“Modern day veterans have their own set of problems, and the legion is helping them out,” he said.

He said the weeks between Halloween and Remembrance Day is a crucial time for them to fundraise and enlist new members and volunteers.