Students from Valley Central Public School take part in caring for headstones at Mountainview Cemetery in November 2025, photo courtesy of Lakehead Public Schools
Local Students Help Care for Veterans’ Headstones
By Bonnie Schiedel
If you’re passing by one of Thunder Bay’s cemeteries in early November, you might see an out-of-the-ordinary field trip. For the past five years, a number of elementary schools have been participating in the No Stone Left Alone project, a national endeavour where students place poppies on veterans’ headstones and learn more about local citizens who served.
And in Thunder Bay, No Stone Left Alone has a special twist. “You put a poppy on a grave, and the wind comes by, and 20 seconds later, the poppy’s blown away, and there’s poppies everywhere,” explains Jim Gilbert, a local veteran. “It’s kind of disrespectful to the graves; it’s kind of disrespectful to the poppies. So I figured [let’s] come up with a better idea.”
Working with a legion branch, they decided to provide stones for students to paint with symbols of remembrance like the poppy. The “stones” are made from concrete and are about the size of a hockey puck, and are sprayed with sealant to protect them from the weather.
Grade seven and eight students from grade schools like Valley Central, Woodcrest, and Westmount, as well as grade five and six students from St. Paul, head to local cemeteries including Mountainview, Riverside, and St. Andrew’s. There, they carefully clean veterans’ headstones with potato brushes and water, then place the stone they painted. Afterwards, they meet up with local veterans and current cadets and service members who come by in field ambulances and other military vehicles to have some lunch and hot chocolate, and answer questions about the words on the headstones—what’s a stoker, for instance, or what H.K. stands for (sailors who tended, fired, and maintained boilers and steam engines aboard warships, and the Battle of Hong Kong, Canadian soldiers’ first land battle of WWII, respectively).
Stones painted by Thunder Bay students, photo by Jim Gilbert
After Remembrance Day, the painted stones are collected from the graves and saved until the following year, when they are placed again. To date, 625 veteran headstones have received a decorated stone, with about 150 more being added each year, says Gilbert.
“It’s a more tangible way for students to see the sacrifice that the soldiers made for our country and see just how many families were affected,” says Jazmin Spina, a teacher at Valley Central Public School, which has 45 students involved in this year’s No Stone Left Alone. “For many students, the reactions were emotional and deeply felt. Painting the stones, placing them on the headstones and cleaning the headstones is a very humbling experience, with many students being shocked by the ages of the soldiers who served,” Gilbert agrees. “We’re trying to bring remembrance in.”
