“We want to thank the teachers for promoting this for us,” zone commander Ed Laird said. “This is one of our biggest programs we have with the Legion.”
The nine winners were selected out of 1,284 entries in the Prince Albert area. Elementary and high school students who entered were asked to write poems, tell stories and make posters.
“This is my way of educating people to come ahead of time to talk to the students whenever they have an assembly and they ask us to,” Laird said. “There are four different categories and we judge them and then they go to zones. The provincial winning posters end up hanging up in the Parliament building in Ottawa.”
Students submit their entries by a deadline date, with teachers getting a notice ahead of time to ask their students to participate.
“We judge them, send the first winners onto the next level,” Laird said. “The first winners get sent to district level. It’s usually the ones that were second or third or less are given back to the schools.”
Winners receive plaques and monetary awards. One Vickers student went as far as provincials.
The amount of entries increased with each round that passes, whether it be zone, district or provincial.
“We’re going to see how many thousands of entries we registered,” Laird said. “One girl from this school here got cut as far as provincials, so there had been quite a few thousand entries by that time.”
This year’s winners from Vickers include Hannah Walker, Braden Schneider, Miranda Bellisle, Ainsley Marie Coles, Grant Alexander, Jabez Santiago, Chelsea Parker, Mohamed Bensaleh, Jessica Noble and Justice Morin.
alex.dipietro@paherald.sk.ca
