Each community has a deep-rooted history, and many have connections to members of their community who have served their country.

To ensure the past is never forgotten, the RM of Thompson is using a Memorial Conservation grant to create a new granite memorial in the Miami Veterans Park. The memorial will be engraved with 750 names.

"Those names represent all the people who've lived in the RM of Thompson and have served in the First or Second World War, Korean War," says Heather Imrie, a member of the Miami parks board, "and who participated in peacekeeping missions in Egypt, Cyprus, Bosnia, and Kosovo."

Imrie says they want to commemorate the members of the municipality who've dedicated themselves to service. Last year, extensive work was done on the park grounds, fixing old infrastructure, and the new memorial is the last of the board's plans for the park.

Once that's completed, Imrie says they will hold a rededication event, with high hopes public health orders will have changed for groups of people to meet again.

"We want to make sure we have a ceremony to celebrate this. It's been well received in the community and close to the hearts of many people. We're definitely very excited about this. Almost everyone in the municipality has numerous family and friends who will have names on there."

Imrie adds her cousin was a peacekeeper in Bosnia, and his name will be on the memorial.

A big push has been getting youth involved, with the board reaching out to local students to provide original art on plaques in the park. She says with each new generation, there is another decade between these conflicts and the board wants to continue to promote education on the importance of preserving history.

An estimate for completion of the project is the first week of September.

Imrie notes there is still a few thousand dollars of the $54,000 left to raise.