Four St. Albert students will likely be on national television next week as they represent their school, city and unit at the national Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa.
About 20 grades 9 and 10 students from Ă©cole Secondaire Sainte Marguerite d’Youville are headed to Ottawa Monday to tour the Supreme Court and Parliament buildings.
They’ll also take in the massive Remembrance Day ceremony at the national war memorial near Parliament Hill on Tuesday. Four of them will participate in it as Air Cadets.
The trip itself has been in the works for months and is meant to teach students about the federal government, said teacher and organizer Rock Thibodeau. He figured the students should take in the ceremony while they were there.
On a whim, he decided to call the national office of the Royal Canadian Legion to see if the students could lay a wreath on behalf of the school during the ceremony. To his surprise, they said yes.
It will be the first time that the school has been officially represented at the national ceremony on Remembrance Day, Thibodeau said.
The Ottawa Remembrance Day ceremony at the national war memorial regularly draws tens of thousands of guests and is shown on national television.
The four St. Albert students taking part in the event are Sgt. Laura Welling, Cpl. Dante Mazzotta, Sgt. Mitchell Desjarlais and Cpl. Mark-Olivier Knoefel of the 533 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron of St. Albert.
Mazzotta, Desjarlais and Knoefel will march in the parade that takes place before and after the event. Welling will lay a wreath at the memorial on behalf of her school.
Welling, Mazzotta, and Desjarlais got to practice their roles Thursday as they marched with their fellow cadets at St. Albert Place as part of the kickoff to Cadet Week.
Welling was so pumped about the upcoming trip that she seemed ready to jump out of her combat boots.
“It’s very rare for an outside person from a different province other than Ontario to lay a wreath at the national level,” Welling said, brimming with excitement. Amongst the cadets, you’d also normally have someone of much higher rank laying the wreath.
Welling said she was ecstatic when she found out about her role in the ceremony and didn’t quite believe the news at first.
The four of them have been practicing their marching in their off-hours in the school gym since September using lacrosse sticks in place of flags and rifles, Mazzotta and Desjarlais said.
Their classmates thought it was pretty weird at first, but now seem to be impressed, Welling added.
“It’s kind of nice to be able to represent such a small community at such a big event.”
Mazzotta said it was a true honour to represent his city, family and province in Ottawa.
Welling said this year’s Remembrance Day celebration was particularly important, as this was the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War.
“We need to thank our veterans for peace today and support our troops for peace tomorrow.”
The parade will start at about 8:30 a.m. MST in Ottawa this Tuesday, the Royal Canadian Legion reports.
