29 March 2016

Beatrix Potter school's connection with Newfoundland war graves

A Canadian network has covered the unlikely connection between students at Beatrix Potter school in Earlsfield and war graves of Newfoundlanders. The graves include that of a nurse who died of Spanish flu just days before the end of the war.

You can listen to the 20-minute story that was originally broadcast.

Here's how it came about, according to Ted Blades of CBC News:

"Twenty-four hours earlier, I walked across Magdalen Road with the Year 2 students as they went to place poppies on the graves of these Newfoundlanders, who all died during the Great War.

This annual observance is something that began by accident 12 years ago when — on an outing to collect conkers in the cemetery — one of the students wondered why the graves in one particular plot had no poppies on them.

The hundreds of other military graves had had a poppy placed on them that Remembrance Day, but not these ones.

In response, her teacher asked, "Why don't we find out?", and thus began what has become a profound and moving kinship between the school and the Newfoundlanders across the way."

Read the full article.

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