Volunteers continued the act of remembering by cleaning up poppies at Beechmount Cemetery Thursday morning. About a dozen people turned out for the work bee organized by Operation Restoration, an Edmonton-based group that organizes a number of activities throughout the year in the spirit of remembrance. No Stone Left Alone places poppies at each headstone before Remembrance Day. “Soldiers are clean people. I’m sure they would not appreciate having poppies flying all over the place, so we’re going to come collect all of them, we’ll dry them out, and we’ll be able to reuse them next year,” said Operation Restoration founder and former special forces operator Justin Yaassoub. “If we look at Vimy Ridge, it’s beautiful. It’s gorgeous. They do a really good job keeping it up…. Our goal, really, is just to try to make sure that these sites are just as good as the ones in Vimy.” Among the most important events that Operation Restoration organizes are summer cenotaph cleaning sessions. “We always speak to our volunteers about there’s (sic) two times that you die: the first time, and then the last time is when people stop saying your name. So we like to come out here, clean the tombstones, clean the cemeteries, and say the fallen’s name, so they know that they’re still in our memory,” Yaassoub said. Operation Restoration is working to expand into other Canadian cities.
