Residents of Chatham-Kent continued to pay their respects this Remembrance Day, despite things looking very different this year.
A ceremony took place at the Chatham Cenotaph on Wednesday morning that was drastically smaller than previous years with pockets of people sporadically spread along King Street West to watch the day's events.
The Remembrance Day ceremony at the Chatham Cenotaph can easily draw hundreds of people during a typical year. However, Chair of the Chatham Cenotaph ceremony for Royal Canadian Legion Branch 642 Tom Mountain said the legion encouraged people to recognize the occasion from home this year if possible.
"This is a scaled-down version. Obviously, we'd want it to be a little bit more intense. The school kids aren't here this year, the crowds aren't here, but we actually told them to stay home," said Mountain. "You couldn't have a thousand people standing around the cenotaph, not in this climate."
The ceremony itself was also scaled back this year, with organizers omitting the traditional parade. Although the service would also normally incorporate children from a local school, students from Winston Churchill Public School were able to take part from afar by hand painting rocks that were placed at the cenotaph.
"That's the first time I've seen that done, that was excellent," said Mountain. "The teachers, the principal at the school should be complimented. The kids did a great job, some of those things were quite artistic on those rocks that the kids put out there."
Similar downsized Remembrance Day ceremonies were held across the country on Wednesday as a result of the pandemic with the Royal Canadian Legion also offering a virtual broadcast of the National Remembrance Day Ceremony in Ottawa.
