The Stratford Poppy Project (SPP) began a year ago with the idea of turning the William Hutt Bridge red with 11,000 poppies adorning it.
Safe to say they’ve hit that goal and just kept on going.
While the initial project came up just shy of the stated goal (reaching 10,300 poppies rather than the 11,000 they aimed for), their latest efforts have already surpassed that.
“When we finished last year’s project and it was done with for the year, we took it down and dried it so we could store them safely,” said Patty Hawkins-Russell, one of the SPP’s organizers. “I then came up with the idea of covering the hedge by Memorial Gardens. It works out because we wanted something in close proximity to the cenotaph, and we just kept making and collecting poppies – we have exactly 12,400 of them now.”
The SPP started out as a small group of women who were knitting poppies, but then it grew into getting poppies sent in by groups and individuals: people in local retirement homes, parishioners from Zion Lutheran Church, and more. Hawkins-Russell said one woman alone has sent in more than 2,000 poppies herself.
“We’re talking about people doing ridiculous amounts of poppies and they just love doing it,” she said. “We collect the poppies, put them on netting and run zip ties through them and then attach the netting to the hedge.”
Most of the poppies are knitted while some are crocheted. Hawkins-Russell said there’s a basic pattern most people follow but as long as it looks right they don’t get too particular about style. Also included in the SPP’s work is a smaller display of purple poppies in honour of animals who lost their lives in military service. That display is adjacent to the one on the William Hutt bridge, right by the intersection of Waterloo Street and Lakeside Drive – according to Royal Canadian Legion Branch 8 Stratford, they set it aside to ensure those animals were properly recognized for their own contributions.
And while the poppies came down relatively quickly last year, Hawkins-Russell said they’re hoping to keep the displays up for an extended period after next Monday’s services.
“Last year we took the display down on November 11, but this year’s is going to stay up longer but I’m not sure for how long,” she said. “Depending on the weather they’d like it to remain up for at least a week. Some people have talked about having a Poppy Month like they have Pride Month, but we’ll see about that.”
Bringing a project together like this brings Hawkins-Russell and her fellow knitters feel a sense of joy in a job well done and thinks that things like this help bridge the gap between generations.
“I know last year when we did the bridge, I knew a couple of school bus drivers and they would have to go over that bridge and they said the kids on their buses went crazy over them,” she said. “And the Legion told us last year that poppy sales were up and they were sure it was due to the bridge.”
