Concrete is poured and groundwork is underway to get Sicamous’ cenotaph and new memorial plaza in place by Remembrance Day.
District of Sicamous operations manager Joe McCulloch says he hopes to have the work completed by the end of October.
This includes construction of a new cenotaph memorial area on the corner of Main Street and Shuswap Avenue.
The timbers have now gone in and work is proceeding.
“And then the landscaping starts and once we do the landscaping we’ll bring the cenotaph back and then we’ll do some more final tweaks to it like put down lights and stuff like that,” McCulloch said.
He emphasized he has every intention of having the work done by Nov. 11, which marks 100 years since the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918 and Canada’s Hundred Days.
The District of Sicamous set out to purchase the Sicamous Legion-owned property where the cenotaph was located in 2016. That purchase was completed in October 2017 for a little over $43,000.
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The cenotaph was removed from the corner of Main and Shuswap in August. Subsequent concerns in the community prompted the legion to assure the public, through a post on the legion’s Facebook page, that the removal was only temporary, to “allow the construction of the new cenotaph and memorial area by the district.”
“We assure you the original stone memorial will be returned with the upgrade,” wrote the legion. “This has been a project in progress for the past year…”
In March of this year, the district received a letter from Veterans Affairs Canada stating the federal department had approved funding of $25,000 under its Commemorative Partnership Program to assist with the construction costs related to the cenotaph and memorial plaza.
The total memorial plaza project is expected to cost approximately $78,000.
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