Veterans Memorial Park

Council approved a capital project for Cookstown Memorial Park Rehabilitation that includes landscape works to improve the drainage on site, monument repairs, tree rehabilitation (maintenance and removal) and additional tree plantings. The restoration efforts, which affect the trees, cenotaph and trench mortar, are meant to help rejuvenate Remembrance Day activities in Cookstown. We thank Royal Canadian Legion Branches 547 Lefroy-Belle Ewart & Branch 171 Alliston Poppy Funds and Veterans Affairs Canada for their generous contributions towards this project.

Next Steps

We are excited to advise that the repairs and restoration work to the monument are almost complete. The necessary work to revitalize the walkway and seating area along with the reconfiguration of the surrounding grades, gardens and turf areas to alleviate some of the drainage concerns on site have also been completed. Many residents of the village have noted that needed refurbishment of the trench mortar has also been completed and is now back in its rightful place of honour in front of the monument.

Ongoing tree rehabilitation work will be completed based on sustainability plan for the grove with further replanting scheduled to take place in the fall of 2021.

We look forward to the continuation of the improvements to this important community space and encourage you to reach out if you have any questions.

Replanting

Trees provide incredible value to our outdoor spaces with natural shade, beauty, and environmental importance. We will be replanting 14 Maple trees in this park over the course of this project in pre-existing locations and where trees have been removed.

In October 2020, we replanted four Red Maple and three Sugar Maple trees on-site to replace those memorial trees that have been previously removed from Veterans Memorial Park.

We hope to repurpose this wood

Maple trees were planted at Veterans Memorial Park in memorial of soldiers who did not make it home after the First World War. We know these trees are an important part of Remembrance Day ceremonies and hold immense historical value. While we will be replanting trees in place of the removals, we want to do something special with the felled wood, if feasible. Based on the initial results from previously dismantled trees, most of the wood is compromised with rot and extremely decayed. However, we will evaluate each tree upon dismantling to assess whether we can collect enough non-degraded wood to repurpose it into something special. Subscribe for project updates and check back often, as we will be reaching out to the community for what they'd like to see done with the wood once we have more information!