Michel Pratt laughed when he was shown a photo of his younger self, a smiling Brookswood student posing in a blue basketball jersey in front of a tree at Derek Doubleday Arboretum.
It was taken for a 2012 Langley Advance Times article about Pratt, an honour roll student, who, together with his sister Elizabeth, had an idea for a war memorial.
“It would have been grade 9 or 10, when we were finishing the project,” Pratt recalled.
“Because in grade 7, I went to Juno Beach with my my dad and got the idea and brought it home to my sister.”
Their idea was Langley Youth for the Fallen, a non-profit organization to create a grove of 158 trees in honour of the 158 Canadians who lost their lives during the nine years of the Afghanistan mission.
It would be called a Walk to Remember.
Many years later, the grown-up Pratt, now a Langley Township councillor, was being interviewed near the memorial, which has become an informal, unofficial, gathering place on Remembrance Day.
“When I was a 12-year-old kid, I had no idea that we could accomplish something like we did,” Pratt recalled.
“It’s amazing to be that age and having the the confidence in saying, well, how hard can it really be to find a piece of land to plant some trees at?” Pratt commented.
A video, created to encourage donations back then, can still be viewed online, with the young Pratt reading from In Flanders Field and urging viewers to help buy 158 trees.
“It took us about two years to really get from the idea of just having a group of trees, with a plaque that said what we were trying to do, to the amazing project that it became,” Pratt told the Langley Advance Times.
Now, trees surround a central commemorative feature symbolizing a tree whose life has been cut short.
Wrapped around the trunk, a steel ribbon ascends towards the sky, carrying the names of the fallen Canadians.
In recent years, the memorial has become a quiet place for people to honour remembrance day.
This Nov. 11, as a councillor, Pratt will make an official appearance at the Aldergrove Legion service, after which he plans to visit Derek Doubleday to lay a poppy on the commemorative structure.
“I think that, for me, is one of the most special parts about the project,” Pratt remarked, “people making it their own.
"On Remembrance Day, they come here [and] they have their own ceremonies. I've seen people who served with some of the people on our commemorative structure who are named there, and they have a special sort of opportunity to spend some time with friends who they don't see anymore, because they didn't make it home. It's a pretty special place.”
Calling himself “just a small cog in the machine,” Pratt thanked then-members of council, especially the late Grant Ward for helping to make A Walk to Remember a reality, as well as the Arboretum and Botanical Society of Langley for looking after the park, as well as the many other supporters of the memorial.
“Just thank you, again, to everybody who was involved in in getting the project off the ground and planted in the ground,” Pratt said.
“[It’s] a testament to this amazing community we get to call home that there's people who can take a vision like that and actually turn it into reality.”
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