When Maggie Burns suggested to friends at her local curling club that their town of Bobcaygeon, Ont., should knit and crochet poppies for Remembrance Day, she never imagined how it would take off.
Last January, 74-year-old Burns, and her friends Alison Williams and Andrea DeFalco, 61 and 71, kick-started the initiative, making a Facebook group to spread word of the project and share the patterns. The group has since grown to 449 members and helped to organize poppy-making events and local business participation.
Each poppy was handmade by a local volunteer from the community.
Now, after almost a year of hard work, the town of just 3,576 people has made nearly 11,000 poppies. At the beginning of November, volunteers set up thousands of poppies on display at seven different locations throughout Bobcaygeon, where they’ll remain for all to admire until Nov. 15.
“The way everybody jumped on board, I was shocked, really,” Burns said. “The participation was just unbelievable.”
Burns took part in a similar poppy project a few years ago, when she briefly lived in St. Marys, Ont. She had also heard of similar installations in other Ontario cities, including Stratford and Niagara Falls. When she returned to Bobcaygeon in September 2025, she was inspired to bring the project home with her.
Burns first requested and received the necessary approvals from the Royal Canadian Legion, the City of Kawartha Lakes and Parks Canada. She needed permission to use the red poppy, as it is a registered trademark owned by the Legion, and because the poppies would be displayed on public property. She got the go-ahead without issue and began recruiting her friends, involving others soon after.
“It just snowballed and the poppies started pouring in,” said Burns, a retired software-test manager who picked up crochet again during the pandemic, after first learning it in the seventies. The poppies are about four inches across and each take roughly 30 minutes to make, depending on whether they’re crocheted or knitted and the crafter’s skill level.
Throughout the winter, the trio held monthly social events at local businesses where people could gather to knit and crochet together. Several of those businesses also operated as drop-off locations, so residents could leave their poppies to be collected when they were done.
Williams, Burns and DeFalco have been putting their time and talents into creating the poppies as a tribute to those who served and sacrificed.
“It became very social,” Williams said. “People loved it because it was just a tiny thing they could do to be part of a great big community event.”
The initial goal was 5,000 poppies, a target the volunteers reached by July, so they set a new objective of 10,000. They hit that by the end of September.
The final official count at the end of October came in at 10,899, though Williams said they’ve received even more since then.
In September, Burns, Williams, DeFalco and other volunteers started meeting up twice a week to sew the poppies onto pieces of mesh for display.
“We’d just sit and chat and stitch and a lot of the ladies became friends,” Burns said. “They were exchanging numbers at the end.”
Burns said the town is proud to pay their respects to veterans in this way and pass down important history to younger generations.
“It’s just a really good feeling,” she said. “My father was in the services and it’s an honour to do this on behalf of the Legion and the veterans who sacrificed so much for us.”
Volunteers also made poppy garlands and 100 poppy sticks that have been placed behind the town’s cenotaph, where the Remembrance Day ceremony is held, to honour the 100th anniversary of the Legion.
The project was met with enthusiasm from community members of all kinds, from residents at the local retirement home to children as young as eight years old. Many also got involved by donating yarn from Granny Bird’s Wool Shoppe in town.
Janet Wilson, 69, hadn’t crocheted in more than 40 years when she heard of the initiative at the curling club – so she decided to relearn. “I made around 180 poppies and really enjoyed the participation of our town in this unique project,” she said.