No. 6 Platoon, Royal Newfoundland Regiment. No. 6 Platoon, Royal Newfoundland Regiment. (Courtesy: The Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador)

Fear of spreading swine flu has led to cancellation of a Remembrance Day event that was to have been attended by hundreds of schoolchildren in the St. John's area.

The decision is disappointing for people who have been working for more than a year on The Poppy and the Caribou, a collection of First World War artifacts and photos in Kelligrews, near St. John's.

"I have a personal interest because of my two grandfathers [who fought in the First World War]," said Allistair Rice, a former teacher who has worked on the exhibit for 18 months. "I also felt that my students had no real, not a very deep …understanding of their own history or of their own family backgrounds in some cases."

The collection, at the Royal Canadian Legion hall in Kelligrews, will be open to the public until Friday.

Soldiers, sailors and government officials at Pleasantville, St. John's, September 1914. Soldiers, sailors and government officials at Pleasantville, St. John's, September 1914. (Courtesy: The Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador)

During the First World War, more than 6,000 men served overseas in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, known as the Blue Puttees, which endured disastrous casualties at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.