Yesterday she was spreading. Today she chopped.

For 27 years, Lorraine Jarvie has prepared sandwiches for the Esquimalt Legion’s biggest annual event – Remembrance Day.

But this year was different.

It started out the same. A group of 12 women organized for the onslaught of guests three days prior. On Sunday, they spread egg and tuna salad and placed meats and cheese in 28 sliced-up loaves of bread. At 7:30 a.m. Nov. 11, they systematically sliced halves creating more than 600 sandwiches.

Then the perfect triangles were placed on carts, pushed into the elevator, rumbled down to the lounge and wheeled to their new home on the two shuffleboard tables covered with table cloths.

This was usually the duty of Jarvie’s husband of 27 years. But this year Jarvie made the trek downstairs herself.

“I reflected on that,” she says, referring to her late husband. “I don’t know what I would do if we didn’t have this place.”

“We’re out of sandwiches,” a woman says as she rushes into the back room where Jarvie sits beside two large coffee pots, taking a small breather.

“It is full like this every year and we run out of sandwiches,” she says with a smile. Her eyes wander to the doorway, beyond which a swarm of people – some in uniform, others not – wearing red poppies on their collars, mingle.

A band blows out swinging tunes from the corner of a wooden dance floor. The trumpet’s notes waft above couples dancing hand-in-hand and reaches the long tables, competing with the chatter of those enjoying jugs of golden beer – and of course, the sandwiches.

Veterans proudly display their shiny medals, each with its own story. Young men and women in crisply pressed uniforms – navy blue, pale blue and green – meander among them, schooling momentarily and then dispersing into the sea of knowledge and history.

Although it’s a day to reflect on the fallen, the buzz is jovial here.

“It’s really kind of a celebration,” Jarvie says, alluding to freedoms won.

Shimmying sideways through thick conversation, Jarvie checks the table of women with her this morning.

They’ve stolen the last plate of sandwiches.

“I’ve been doing this at least six years,” Shirley Bourgeois says with regards to the sandwich preparation.

She sits at the far end. Her tightly curled hair frames small features, but her spirit is large enough to demand an extra seat.

“I worked in the dockyards for 34 years,” she says. “Every day was different, so it was never boring.”

When she was just out of school, Bourgeois took a job at CFB Esquimalt’s base order supply department, earning a monthly wage of $64. Bourgeois was born the year Adolf Hitler became führer – 1934. Her father fought in both wars, but never spoke of them. All Bourgeois knows is that he lost his knee cap and a piece of shrapnel came within two inches of taking his life in the Great War. The metal chunk remained snug in its position neighbouring her father’s heart until his death many years later.

Shell shock in the Second World War, paralyzed him and sent him home early. “He was always my hero,” Bourgeois says. “He was very quiet, but he always had a twinkle in his eye.”

Jarvie intervenes asking Bourgeois if she wants anything to drink.

"A Coke," she replies.

Now the sandwiches lie unguarded, their protective cellophane wrapping taking its place in the garbage.

raldous@vicnews.com