This week's Councillor Column is written by Ellen Morton, chair of Argyll and Bute Council's Helensburgh and Lomond area committee.
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While the work on Hermitage Park will continue for some time and the park will remain closed, the council, working with the British Legion and the Friends of Hermitage Park, provided safe access to the war memorial on Saturday, November 11 and Sunday, November 12 to allow the annual service of remembrance to take place there.
Phase one of the work on the war memorial will be completed in time but phase two will remain to be done. This £300,000 project to restore the Category A listed memorial, which was designed by Helensburgh architect Alexander Nisbet Paterson, and is considered the finest in Scotland, is part of the multi million pound wider project to regenerate Hermitage Park.
The memorial gates have been restored and reinstalled, and were re-dedicated last week, and the reflective pond is also complete, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the War Memorial Trust.
Apparently there is a feeling among some young people that they will not wear a poppy, seeing it as a celebration of war, or as a symbol of racism.
I believe that is a complete misunderstanding of the origins and history of the poppy.
It is there not to celebrate war but to remind us of the deaths of so many men and women, not just in the First World War and Second World War, but also in other conflicts across the globe right up to the present day.
My husband and I recently celebrated our golden wedding anniversary by going on a trip to France. While we were there, we took the opportunity to visit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s cemetery in Saint Sever near Rouen.
One of my great uncles is buried there, having died in France in October 1917, so we were there almost exactly 100 years after his death.
The place is beautifully maintained and staffed by volunteers, and is both incredibly peaceful and incredibly sad at the same time.
I think it is right that we remember those who died in conflict. They sacrificed everything in the hope that we who followed them might live in peace.
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