Two Penticton high school students are ensuring the 100th anniversary of the armistice, which ended the First World War, is one to remember for their classmates.

Grace Robinson, a Grade 12 student at Princess Margaret Secondary School, has teamed up with Grace Grant, a Grade 12 student at Penticton Secondary School, to organize the first-ever, combined Remembrance Day ceremony for the schools. It will be taking place on Nov. 8 at Gyro Park where approximately 1,800 staff and students and invited guests are expected to be in attendance.

Grant’s older sister used to organize Penticton Secondary’s Remembrance Day ceremony and even wrote a song titled The Letter which has since been featured at each ceremony after. Grant was actively involved in the ceremonies before, but this is her first time acting as an organizer.

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“My sister piqued my interest, and I thought it was cool she was doing something big like this for a leadership project,” said Grant. “I connected with Sandra Richardson (vice principal at Penticton Secondary) and she’s been a big part of this, and that’s how I connected with Grace.”

For Robinson, she has been organizing Princess Margaret’s Remembrance Day ceremony since she first started attending the school in Grade 9.

“This will be my fourth year organizing it outside,” said Robinson. “My first year I started organizing it with Grant’s sister as my mentor, since she had done it before me.”

Both agree they wanted to change how the ceremonies were previously done because they wanted to better engage the students and make it more impactful.

“I never liked the way Remembrance Day ceremonies were and really thought they were under appreciated,” said Robinson. “I just thought no one else was going to change it so I might as well try. I’ve been doing it every year since then, doing different outdoor ceremonies.”

Both girls say that at first it was hard to convince the schools to do a combined ceremony, simply because of the amount of students and staff there are at each. Grant added that Penticton Secondary usually holds their ceremony in the gym and tries to not take up too much class time.

“The real line-catcher that I used to convince the teachers was ‘If we can come together at times of war, why can’t two schools come together and celebrate this day in times of peace,'” said Robinson. “Being together and working together is something we should be thankful for, and just remembering that 100 years ago some things happen that we are not proud of and we need to remember the people who sacrificed themselves to get us where we are now.”

Robinson said holding the ceremony outside is more impactful for students and that even if the schools choose not to combine their ceremonies next year, she hopes Penticton Secondary will continue holding theirs outdoors.

Grant explained they will still use her sister’s song and have chosen four students to act as soldiers between each verse. The focus is to provide the perspective of a former student of Penticton Secondary, Capt. Jonathan Snyder, who died while on tour in Afghanistan.

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“A lot of the teachers from Penticton Secondary have a connection with that because they knew him. So I’ll be singing the song my sister wrote and in between the verses they’ll be reading a letter from the point of view of Jonathan,” said Grant.

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Students from both Penticton Secondary and Princess Margaret will perform selected musical pieces, including a violin solo of a song from the film Schindler’s List while the wreaths are being laid. The two schools’ choirs will teaming up to sing an arrangement of Flanders Field.

“Justin Glibbery from Penticton Secondary wrote the song, so it will use the poem but in song form. That’s going to be really cool to see both schools working together especially,” said Grant.

“Our wreath layers will be people from (both schools), the Penticton Indian Band, and members of the school district,” said Robinson. “And we have students singing the Okanagan song as well.”

Both girls agree they wanted to ensure there was equal representation of both schools throughout the ceremony, but noted that it is a mostly student-run event.

“We’ll be having leadership students from both schools even helping with the traffic of it — we’re going to be trying to get almost 2,000 people in this area so we need people who know what’s going on,” said Grant.

“We kept this pretty limited because we didn’t want to take away from the actual City of Penticton Remembrance Day ceremony, so we wanted to make sure it was people who are advocates for the schools,” said Robinson.

Robinson said she and Grant have spent upwards of 100 hours organizing this event, something they took on in September. The ceremony will start at 10:30 a.m. and will last half an hour.

The two would like to thank Richardson, Don and Lori Grant, Bo Boxall, Justin Glibbery and Travis Bond for their support and contributions.

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