Legion Sign Refurbishment Project

Sarah Guigue is a grade 12 student at Granite Ridge Education Centre, who is hoping to study Medical Radiation Technology when she graduates high school.

She is also artistically inclined and community minded. Her father Gerald regularly attends Friday Night suppers. At one of the suppers in the early summer of this, he noticed an old Legion sign in a forgotten corner of the lawn behind the building, by a fence. It was not in good repair and was starting to sink into the grass.

He asked around about it, and learned that it had been donated to the Sharbot Lake Legion from a branch in Kingston years earlier, and when it arrived it was already in a deteriorated state. No one had the time to arrange for repairs and it ended up on the lawn by the fence, deteriorating more each year.

Gerald asked Sarah if she was interested in repairing it and she was, and he asked the Legion executive if that was ok they were happy to let Sarah have a go at it.

“I was working at Silver Lake Provincial Park this summer, and in my spare time I worked on the sign,” she said.

The first thing she did was remove the rotting chip board backing that the sign was mounted on. She then began to chip away the paint, and took her time until it was completely removed from the sign. She then blocked off all but the gold/bronze sections of the sign, and spray painted that colour. The rest of the restoration work was done with a paint brush and mostly red and blue paint.

“I was hoping to make the colour pop. I worked away at it all summer, and finished in early September,” she said.

She estimates she put about 25 hours of work into the project by the time she was finished.

Bill Wilson and Branch President Connie Mclellan were thrilled with the results, and planned to have it installed on the lawn of the Legion property, facing Legion Road.

The unveiling took place last Friday, November 6, on the day of the Veterans Dinner and just before Remembrance Day.

Legion members, and Central Frontenac Township officials, came to the unveiling, including Mayor (and Legion member) Frances Smith, who is recovering from back surgery.

And, as Sarah had hoped, the sign really pops.

“The way we have it placed, you can see it as you come up over the hill to get to the branch, it is like welcome to the Legion,” said Branch #425 President Connie Mclellan

A reporter from CTV News in Ottawa was on hand and the tv spot she prepared appeared on the Friday Night News and has attracted significant attention on Instagram as well.

Sarah Guigue is more or less unfazed by the attention.

“The Legion is very important in small towns like Sharbot Lake, for the entire community, and the veterans. People go there for music, and for meals. There are not many other places to gather, so anything to help the Legion keep going is worth doing,” she said. “Besides, I enjoyed doing the project,” she sai