SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The Field of Honour at Lakeview Cemetery is a place Rev. John Sperry holds close to his heart.

His late wife worked as a nurse for the British military during the lengthy attacks on Britain's major cities known as the Blitz.

The Field of Honour received some cosmetic maintenance recently. Over two days, volunteers painted old boards, replaced stones and set up preventative measures against weeds to improve the commemorative area honouring veterans. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

"She was buried there and one day I will be with her there," Sperry said from his Yellowknife home this week. "She had a regard for this place and it's being kept well."

Ground maintenance was recently completed on the burial area located just inside the gates of the cemetery. Lloyd Lush, past president of the Royal Canadian Legion, visited the cemetery recently and decided that something had to be done to improve the cosmetics of the area.

"I drive by the service area now and again and it didn't look really great," Lush said. "I talked to the new president and said we needed to do some work up there."

Lush and current Legion president Blaine Kelly teamed up with North Slave Correctional Centre staff, and got down to work.

"I donated my equipment and my time and got the material and put it all together," Lush said. "Grass and everything growing around the path and the cenotaph. We cut it all and put a bunch of new white rock in there.

"It took a couple days to fix it up and paint some old walking boards that were there. I used my Caterpillar to take all the old dirt away and bring all the white rock in. The boys shovelled and raked it all over and I supplied some plastic so that the grass wouldn't grow through the rocks again."

The area honours those who gave their lives to uphold the freedoms we enjoy and values we live by today. Gazing at a photo of the HMS Verdun, the ship that he served on in the North Sea, Sperry spoke of the supreme price of fighting for freedom.

"When you think of the tens of thousands, on both sides, that never survived, it makes you honour those who served in whatever they did," he said. "Some of us didn't have such a rough time and others had an awful time.

"The acknowledgement of the price paid, the supreme payment was of course that you never came back, anything we can do to preserve that area of the cemetery is to be claimed appreciated by all of us indeed."