P.E.I. community searching for names of military members before they are forgotten

A remembrance committee in Fort Augustus, P.E.I., is on a mission to ensure those from the area who provided military service are never forgotten.

The group is trying to recover the names of local people dating back to the First World War who served in the military in either Canada, the U.S.A. or the United Kingdom.

"Many people have heard of those stories, but they're not aware that some of those people not only are Islanders, but some come right from their own community," said committee member Pat Duffy, adding that there is no such list in the community currently.

"If it didn't happen now, it would probably never happen and the sacrifices by so many people would be forgotten."

As people get older, he said, time is of the essence. Memories are fading and Duffy felt it was time to gather as much information as possible before it disappeared for good. 

"We have interviewed individuals in the community all the way up to age 94," he said. "They remember when they were in the church, someone would show up in their military uniform. Or so-and-so came back from the war, he stayed around for a while, and then they went off to the States, or they may have [gone] out to Western Canada."

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Looking for more names

Duffy said he's learning a lot too. For instance, he was told about one local woman who worked as a nurse in the First World War and another woman from nearby who did administrative work. He said there was a man from the area who died in the 1914-1918 conflict and three others who were killed in the Second World War. 

"They lie over [in] a grave across the ocean, and they can be so easily forgotten about because there's nothing here."

So far, the committee has collected about 160 names, but members are certain there are more and are looking to the public to submit names that might be missing. 

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"The unfortunate thing is we'll probably never get it 100 per cent because there's going to be somebody who got overlooked," Duffy said. 

"But once we are confident that we've gathered as many as we can, we want to have it printed up in a respectable fashion and then framed, and what we'll do is we'll hang it in the St Patrick's Church here in Fort Augustus." 

Duffy hopes seeing the list encourages a sense of pride in the community's younger generation. 

"That's a message that I think we want to instill in our youth and let them know that over the years, the people that contributed... were ancestors of theirs, neighbours of theirs, and that they lived right here in our community," said Duffy. "It's important that we don't forget those people."