When Garth Zwicker started the veterans’ banner project in Sackville in 2015, he just wanted to honour those who had served from the Tantramar region.
Inspired by a similar program he saw when visiting his father at a veterans’ home in Saint John, he helped get 16 banners up the first year.
In 2026, the municipality put up 250, with requests for new banners each year.
Over the years, Zwicker says people told him he should write a book about the banners. Still, it was never truly on his radar until Logan Atkinson, then-president of the Tantramar Heritage Trust, approached him after Zwicker was the keynote speaker at the Trust’s annual general meeting.
And so began two years of work on They Live On in Memory: The Tantramar Veterans Banner Project, a 348-page book released on Nov. 1, 2026 and published by the Tantramar Heritage Trust.
But if you ask Zwicker, he didn’t write a book.
“ The families wrote the book really with their stories; and the trust has a book committee, and they are very good at what they do. So my job was really to compile all the banners that I had, all the stories that I had, get the permissions from the families to use their banner and their story, and (for) those that were missing, go back out and try and get those.”
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Since that first year, Zwicker has been collecting the stories of those 250 veterans from the family members as part of the process for getting a new banner sponsored.
Some are fairly standard—so-and-so served here in this year and so on—while others get more emotional, like the story of Atkinson’s uncle Robert, whose mother received the news of his death in Holland during the First World War via a bicyclist from Sackville arriving at their Westcock farm on Mother’s Day.
It’s an event Atkinson wasn’t alive to witness, but his cousins were, he said.
“ And I should say, the significance of this book as history is captured in memories like that because, but for this book, memories such as that would forever be lost. And that’s where the historical value resides in my opinion.”
It’s that belief in the historical value of memories and storytelling that spurred Atkinson to encourage Zwicker and eventually help to figure out a structure for the book and how it would be organized. Though, like Zwicker, Atkinson is quick to downplay his individual role in the project—the 44th published by the Tantramar Heritage Trust.
Beyond the historical significance, Zwicker has heard from many about how much it means to folks to see their relatives commemorated each year so prominently. He knows himself what it feels like because his own father is among them.
“ To me, it’s like he’s close to me. Just this morning I drove by his banner. Every time I drive by his banner, you know, ‘hi, Dad,’ and I know other people do that with their veteran as well. It just kinda stirs up a little emotion for everybody.”
