HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuron Expositor, 2016-08-03, Page 1616 Huron Expositor • Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Photos by Justine Alkema Clinton News Record
Hard at work.
The finished product.
The clay poppies before being painted.
Members of the community met at the former Holmesville Public School for the last several weeks to make
poppies for a community art project.
Community art project honours Huron County WWI soldiers
Justine Alkema
Clinton News Record
Dozens of community
members have been hard at
work on a large-scale art pro-
ject that will benefit the entire
county. They are making
around 600 clay poppies to
honour each life lost from
Huron County in World War I.
For four days from 9 a.m. -
4 p.m., volunteers met at the
former Holmesville Public
School and constructed the
flowers in an assembly line
fashion. They were able to
use the space for free cour-
tesy of Ken Brindley.
The poppies are a part of
the 100th anniversary of the
Battalion shipping out to
serve in the First World War.
They will be at the Goderich
cenotaph from the end of
September until early
November, and then they
will likely be sent to legions
throughout the county.
This idea started at the
Huron Arts & Heritage Net-
work, but was headed up by
a group of locals who were
passionate about the idea.
"It's a lot of work, but just
knowing what it's going to
look like makes it worth it,"
said organizer Ruth Anne
Merner. "So many people are
involved and can take pride
in it, and that makes it so
worthwhile:'
The project was inspired by
a similar but much larger
project in Britain called
"Blood Swept Lands and Seas
of Red'. They made 888,246
poppies for all the British sol-
diers lost in the war.
There were not quite 600
men and woman who lost
their lives in WWI, but by
making 600 they will have
more than enough.
The war did make quite a
dent in Huron County's pop-
ulation. Not only did hun-
dreds of men and also some
women die fighting, but after
the war, the men brought the
Spanish Flu back with them.
This also killed many people
in Huron County. The popu-
lation in Huron County in
1911 was 52,983 and in 1921
it was 47,088.