The Southeast Military Museum has banners up around the community once again, honouring the many veterans who gave their lives for the country.
Estevan residents can find those on 4th Street, Kensington Avenue, King Street, and other major roadways. However, Estevan isn't the only town displaying the banners, as the museum has partnered up with a number of different communities for the project.
Craig Bird, President and Curator of the Southeast Military Museum, says the project has grown quite a bit over the years.
"Since 2021, we've started a banner program through the museum and have expanded since then. We're in 13 communities now because we just added Ogema this year to the program. So, banners are up in quite a few of the communities around basically celebrating the service of military veterans throughout those communities."
Coordinating across the southeast can be difficult, but Bird says getting those banners up is rewarding. "It's always a challenge coordinating with these places. Some of the organizations and some of those towns have kind of adopted the program and are kind of self-perpetuating. The ones that aren't now, we're still helping them out and getting stuff going. So it's one of those things, we've got, as of the end of last year, we added a total of 141 banners commemorating over 200 veterans in those communities."
"First Nations from the Carlyle area, some British and Australian war veterans that their families are now in those communities and commemorating those. So we have quite a little mix-match of veterans." Bird says the banners also include one new category giving honours in the community.
"This year was the first time we had a Silver Cross mother. So she was a mother of two veterans that were overseas and ended up being killed at the Dieppe raid. She was honoured by Ottawa for being the Silver Cross mother and laying a wreath in Ottawa in 1979. Which is, you know, a little bit of an honour for the Carlyle community and one of the first times that we commemorated somebody other than a veteran on one of the banners."
Carlyle residents will be able to see a banner of Eliza Beatty in the community.
For Bird, the program is something he hopes to see continue for a while. "It's one of those things where you know, it's just taking the remembrance to another level. Unfortunately, we're losing a lot of our World War 2 veterans because they're getting up and up in age and we want to make sure that people remember them."
"It's kind of nice to throw their pictures up because a lot of the veterans that came back after the war, you know, were highly involved in their communities and people recognize them and see them and make comments about how they knew so and so because they work with them years later and that sort of thing. So it's kind of nice."
Bird says people can find more information on the banners appearing around the southeast on the Southeast Military Museum's website.