Role in Remembrance Day service a tremendous privilege.
Downsview's Shirley Berry, in pink, has been the standard bearer for the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) for 42 years. Here, she participates in a Remembrance Day service at the Strachan Avenue Military Cemetery.
Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD
For Shirley Berry, this year's Remembrance Day service at the Strachan Avenue Military Cemetery, located just west of Fort York, held particular significance. Berry has been a standard bearer for the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) for 42 years. Her eyesight is too bad to continue and she has conceded that this year will be the last year she will perform this task. When you have sent family members to war, as she has, and not all of them have come back, Berry said honouring their memory by acting as a standard bearer for 42 years is a tremendous privilege.A Primary Life Member of the IODE, Berry was a member of the Royal Oaks chapter of the IODE before it went defunct about five years ago.The IODE is a Canadian women's charitable organization. They work to improve the quality of life for children, youth and those in need. Despite her poor eyesight, Berry spends much of her spare time knitting for the charity.She said the IODE has had a long association with the Strachan Avenue Military Cemetery, Toronto's second major burial ground with an estimated 200 graves on site. The IODE was instrumental in restoring the neglected military burial grounds and they have been holding Remembrance services on the site since 1952, in recent years in cooperation with the City of Toronto Cultural Services.Berry is from Sheffield, England and moved to Canada 62 years ago on Dec. 24, 1947. She was 13 years old at the time. Her family landed in Halifax and then moved to British Columbia. She now lives in Downsview, in North Toronto.