Martensville woman keeps remembrance alive with lawn display
A homemade tribute to Canadian veterans
Every November, Jan Diehl adorns her Martensville, Sask., home with a special Remembrance Day tribute.
"I do other displays like Christmas displays and Halloween displays and that," said Diehl, who started the tradition eight years ago.
"I thought this was the one that was missing from everybody's yard."
Diehl begins transforming her lawn shortly after Halloween festivities wrap up.
She said the idea is for people to slow down and honour a day that sometimes gets lost between major holidays.
"They're missing such a big part," she said. "Why we're all free."
Diehl said it is difficult finding Remembrance Day decor, so now she makes everything on her own.
She has her display set up in two parts.
There are lawn decorations with rows of poppies, crosses and the Canadian flag.
Then there are artifacts — photographs and letters — telling the stories of soldiers who fought in Afghanistan along her fence.
Remembering local veterans
What started as a personal act of remembrance has now grown into a commitment to honouring local veterans.
"During COVID, Sherbrooke Homes had come here and some of the veterans had been brought out in their wheelchairs," Diehl said.
"They were hanging on to my hand and they thanked me for doing this, and it was supposed to be about them not me, so I didn't expect that."
For Diehl said it's more than a seasonal decoration — it's a personal commitment to preserving Canada's military history.
"There was a veteran that came here and he had written a poem that had never gone anywhere," she said. "It was about going to war, and he said, 'I think that you're the perfect person to do something with it.'"
While the display is only up for a short time each year, Diehl is glad to always see the appreciation it brings from her neighborhood.
"A lot of the kids that were coming around, they were all talking about, 'we like all your displays, but we love this one,'" she said. "I thought that was kind of cool. So kids are actually starting to pay attention to it."
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