Remembrance Day at the Military Museum
Red poppies on lapels, decorated veterans at supermarket entrances – sure signs that Remembrance Day is around the corner. We’ll be marking the day in Kelowna with ceremonies at the Cenotaph in City Park as well as in Rutland Lions Park, and a moment of silence at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday. We all have our own thoughts around what Remembrance Day means to each of us. Here’s a meaningful way to gain perspective, and try on those shoes (if not walk a mile in them) of the people who fought in WWI and WWII: visit the Okanagan Military Museum as part of your Remembrance Day ritual. As you’ll see in the video below, there’s so much to learn about what our veterans experienced so that we can live free today.
Entrance to the Okanagan Heritage Museum.
For this video, I spoke with Wayne Wilson who is the Executive Director of the Kelowna Museums. The group of museums that Wayne oversees are the Okanagan Heritage Museum, the Okanagan Military Museum, the BC Orchard Industry Museum, and the VQA Wine Museum (these last two housed in the same heritage building, the Laurel Fruit Packinghouse). All together, these museums go a long way to educating visitors, residents, and school groups about the history of this area.
The museums are all located within a short walk of one another in Kelowna’s Cultural District. This 6-block area of downtown Kelowna spans from Queensway at its south end to Clement at the north end. Water Street and Ellis Street make up its east-west boundary. To have a complete map of the Cultural District including the location of these museums, pick up a Cultural District brochure at a downtown kiosk or at the Visitor Centre at 544 Harvey Ave. – or see it online here.
I got a lot out of my tour of the museum with Wayne, shown below. I hope that you will enjoy the explorations too.
