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Salmon Arm Legion 'very pleased' with upgrades around city cenotaph

Work completed over the summer
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The Salmon Arm Legion have a few modifications planned for this year's Remembrance Day ceremony at the recently upgraded Salmon Arm Cenotaph intersection.

Plans and providence played into major improvements in the area around the Salmon Arm Cenotaph.

Darin Gerow, the city's roads and parks manager, said members of Royal Canadian Legion Branch 62 asked Salmon Arm council to provide an electrical outlet to improve the sound system.

About the same time, council approved a staff recommendation to address road and sidewalk issues after engineers advised that traffic flow around the site could be improved. To that end the city closed off the Alexander Street NE road from Okanagan to Second Avenue NE. 

Gerow said the timing of the legion request to provide electricity to the cenotaph fitted easily into already existing city plans.

“We thought this was a great opportunity to do something,” he said, noting the total $145,000 cost of the work came from general revenue and the BC Growing Communities Fund. “We’re really happy it worked out,” he said. “Public Works did much of the work and uncovered some poor soils, concrete and asphalt underneath the surface.”

The work that also included new landscaping and irrigation, took place over several weeks last summer, created safer traffic flow and met with legion approval.

“We’re very pleased with the results,” said Branch 62 President Lance Ewan, who noted other improvements will be in place for Remembrance Day this year.

A tent and chairs will be set up to accommodate residents from several seniors’ homes and others with mobility issues. 

As well as the regular Remembrance Day ceremony, Shuswap Middle School Grade 8 student Leticia Wigglesworth will read a short story she wrote about her great-great grandfather who was killed in action during the First World War. 

Her story won first place in the Royal Canadian Legion’s BC Yukon Command and took third place in the legion’s National Youth Remembrance Contest.