Recent tragedies lead more to wear poppies

The Royal Canadian Legion (RCL) said this year’s poppy campaign has already received a lot of attention following the deaths of two Canadian soldiers.

Carol Eybersin, chairperson of the poppy and wreath campaign for 2014-15 with the Prince Albert chapter believes this year’s campaign will be affected by the murders.

“I think the whole poppy and wreath campaign this year will be a little bit different,” she said. “Everybody is just so bewildered and upset by all this, I know that’s the way I feel.”

 Eybersin said already this year they have seen a few more wreath purchases.

“I’ve had two or three people that have come in and have bought wreaths that haven’t before,” she said. “The people that buy wreaths usually buy them in honour of a family veteran.”

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Eybersin said that’s only a few extra wreaths but the pin and wreath campaign still has lots of time, running until Nov. 11, 2014.

“Wreaths have to be bought down here at the legion,” she said.

Poppies are now available all across the country.

“We started selling the poppies today [Oct. 31, 2014], actually they were officially on sale after 2:30 [p.m.] yesterday [Oct. 29, 2014] because that’s when the governor-general got his poppy and as soon as he gets his then everybody else can buy theirs,” she said.

Last year, Eybersin said they sold around 40,000 pins and that’s probably going to go up this year.

Walmart, Safeway, Superstore and Co-op are the four main locations to donate and pick up a pin in Prince Albert.

“Most of the other smaller stores in town have poppy trays, so just about everywhere in town you can buy a poppy,” she said.

All the money raised goes into a fund which can be used for veterans having a hard time, families and even into bursaries for children who had or have a veteran in their family.

“It goes into the poppy trust fund and we can’t use any of that money to operate the legion branch here in town, it’s a trust fund and all the poppy money goes in there,” she said.

In the past, Eybersin said they received permission from their command in Regina and gave some of the money in the poppy fund to the Victoria Hospital.

“We gave the Vic Hospital $40,000 to buy two medical chair beds,” she said.  As well as “two air beds for the sixth-floor palliative care unit.”

kbruch@panow.com

On Twitter: @KaylaBruch1