Every November, thousands of Alberta schoolchildren kneel beside a stranger’s headstone, say a name aloud, and set down a poppy. That ritual traces back to one Edmonton woman’s private grief. Maureen Bianchini Purvis, inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2022, built No Stone Left Alone from a solitary bicycle ride to her mother’s grave into a movement that now reaches across Canada and into Europe. Her story is less about ceremony than about a promise made as a grieving twelve-year-old, and kept for the rest of her life.
A Promise Kept at Beechmount Cemetery
Maureen Gay Bianchini was born in Edmonton on February 27, 1959, the eleventh of thirteen children born to Albert and Lillian Bianchini. Her parents had both served in the Second World War, her father with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and her mother with the Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Corps, and the sound of army trucks rumbling past the family home in Edmonton’s north end became part of her earliest memories. When Maureen was twelve, her mother died of cancer, and the household she had known fell apart. At fourteen she moved in with the family of her school friend Susan, the Stewarts, who gave her the stability her own home no longer could. Through all of it, Maureen kept one small promise to her mother: she would visit her grave every Remembrance Day and lay a poppy in her memory. She made the trip alone on her bike at first, then with her boyfriend, then her husband Randall Purvis, and eventually with her own two daughters.
From a Bike Ride to a National Movement
The turning point came at the cenotaph in Beechmount’s Field of Honour, where Maureen’s family paused each year after visiting her mother’s grave. Looking out over rows of bare headstones, her youngest daughter asked why only one grave had a poppy. In 2011, Maureen founded No Stone Left Alone to answer that question for good. A chance connection brought a lieutenant colonel and eighty soldiers, including veterans recently returned from Afghanistan, to the first ceremony at Beechmount. A meeting with Alberta’s Minister of Education brought the first two schools on board. When a friend’s video of the event captured its raw emotion, it landed on the front pages of the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun the next morning, and Maureen’s small tradition became a public one almost overnight.
Teaching a Generation to Remember
What sets No Stone Left Alone apart is not the poppy itself but the process behind it. Students research the story of a specific soldier, then say that person’s name aloud as they place a poppy on the headstone, turning an abstract history lesson into a personal bond between a child and a stranger who died decades before they were born. Within three years, the program covered every cemetery in Edmonton, with schools lining up to take part. It has since expanded into every Canadian province, drawn the support of mayors, premiers, and Governor General Mary Simon, who now serves as its patron, and been carried overseas to ceremonies in England, France, Poland, and South Africa. Global Television has livestreamed the main Beechmount event annually and produced a half-hour special on the organization’s work. According to her Alberta Order of Excellence profile, tens of thousands of military members have been honoured through the program so far.
Recognition for a Life of Service
Maureen’s own path before founding No Stone Left Alone included volunteer work with the Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse and the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, where she mentored a five-year-old boy named Patrick Hughson, a relationship the two have maintained for decades. That instinct to show up for other people’s children carried directly into the organization she built for other families’ fallen. Her work has been recognized with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012, the Meritorious Service Medal in 2021, and the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal (Alberta) in 2022, the same year she was named to the Alberta Order of Excellence. Today, Maureen still reads every reflection letter that students send her after taking part in a ceremony, a habit that keeps the program rooted in the same personal connection that started it. She lives in Edmonton with Randall, and their daughters Sara and Keely, along with four grandchildren, remain part of the organization’s ongoing work.
What would it mean for your own community if no headstone were ever left without someone to remember the name on it?
