Friends and family members from a tight-knight Mennonite community near Tillsonburg, Ont., came to London on Friday for a ceremony to commemorate two of their own who were killed on a construction site two years ago.

A tree-planting ceremony was held in honour of Henry Harder, 26, and John Martens, 21. The employees of a Tillsonburg concrete company died when a building they were working on at 555 Teeple Terrace in London collapsed while concrete was being poured on an upper floor.

Since 1991, April 28 has officially been marked in Canada as a national day of mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. 

Harder’s and Martens’s mothers, along with about two dozen friends and family members, came to watch a pair of red oak trees being planted in the two men’s names.

The trees were planted on the grounds of the London & District Construction Association.

Mike Carter, who heads the association, said the accident has led to new efforts to increase workplace safety for construction workers.

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