MICHAEL PRATT
BROOKSWOOD SECONDARY (LANGLEY)
There is no other way to describe Michael Pratt’s vacation back in the summer of 2010 than to call it a walk to remember.
Still only 13, he had heard the stories of his great-great grandfather James David Pratt, who had lost his life on the battlefield while fighting for the Scottish Regiment during World War I.
It was that family connection which led to a fascination with military history, and that summer, to convince his dad Jim to take him to Juno Beach, the site where Canadian forces led one of five D-Day landings by the Allied forces in Normandy, in German-occupied France, during World War II.
What the young Pratt saw that day led him on the path to become a real difference maker, a beyond-his-years visionary with a plan that he accompanied with a swift course of action.
“We visited a cemetery for the fallen Canadian troops who had died in the landing and it was a massive cemetery,” says Pratt, now a senior and a multi-sport standout at Langley’s Brookswood Secondary. “I saw all of the white tombstones with the maple leafs, but the thing that struck me most was that they had planted all of these trees there.”
A tour guide had told the family that day that the trees had been planted in memory of the Canadian soldiers who had died in the Normandy campaign.
“It struck me that the trees were like a living memorial,” says Pratt. “The soldiers could live on through the trees. I thought that was poignant. The want to live on, and be remembered.”
That fall, Pratt began Grade 8 at Brookswood with an idea.
“As a young person, I wanted to remember the troops who had died in my lifetime, so the idea was to apply the same premise (at Juno Beach) to the modern war in Afghanistan.”
Pratt, along with his older sister Elizabeth, began to work together with the idea of creating a memorial in Langley which would ultimately honour all of the 158 soldiers and four civilians who lost their lives in Afghanistan. The idea was presented to the Township of Langley and very quickly received approval. Land was donated. And over the next two years, the pair raised about $100,000 for the planting of 162 trees.
Officially opened on Remembrance Day 2012 adjacent to the Langley Regional Airport, and fittingly named Langley Youth For The Fallen: A Walk To Remember, the memorial, which contains a commemorative structure with all of the soldiers names, has touched Canadians from coast to coast.
There is even a connection in some of the trees that were planted.
“There are these massive deador cedars,” begins Pratt, who in the fall was elected student body president of Brookswood’s graduating Class of 2015. “They are native to Afghanistan but they can also grow here. The regions are the same. But I just hope we never have to plant another tree.”
A lot has happened to Pratt in the five years since he began his high school life at Brookswood, and he’s set the bar pretty high in terms of his future goals.
“I want to be our youngest prime minister,” states the bilingual Pratt, who in 2013 won the provincial title for French public speaking, and was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal to honour significant contributions and achievements by Canadians.
While maintaining a 90 per cent average the whole way, he’s taken on his heaviest load as a senior on the school’s teams. In addition to playing basketball, he ran on the cross-country team and played soccer, helping the school qualify for the provincial championships in both sports.
And wherever his journey takes him, he is heartened to know that the Walk To Remember will endure, growing and maturing with each passing year.
“A lot of stuff might wear away, but those trees will be there forever,” he begins. “I am happy with what my sister and I were able to accomplish, that those men and women who paid the ultimate price will be remembered forever.”
Can we define a difference maker any better?
