Remembrance Day program honours all veterans

Canadian veterans will be honoured at the annual Remembrance Day parade and ceremony hosted by the City of Vancouver tomorrow at Victory Square on West Hastings Street.

Started in 1924, Remembrance Day at Victory Square is the oldest annual ceremony in Vancouver and generations of Vancouverites have participated in this historic event for the past 86 years.

The event is organized by the Vancouver Remembrance Day Committee, a volunteer group established by the City in the 1940s with the mandate to conduct the November 11 ceremony on behalf of its citizens. Vancouver is the only city in Canada to host the ceremony as a civic event.

New to this year’s ceremony will be the lighting of the Olympic cauldron at Jack Poole Plaza at the Vancouver Convention Centre at 8:20 a.m. to commemorate the service of Canadian veterans at home and abroad. The special event will also honour the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy and the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada.

At Victory Square, the prelude to the formal ceremony begins at 10 a.m. when the Vigil Guard takes its place on the Cenotaph, followed by a performance by the Vancouver Bach Youth Choir until 10:30 a.m. when the parade of veterans and other marching units arrive at the site.

At 11 a.m., the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Last Post will be sounded.

After a two-minute silence, a 21-gun salute will be set off at Crab Park by members of the Royal Canadian Artillery’s 15th Field Regiment.

The bugler will then play Reveille, followed by the piping of the Lament. The Bach Youth Choir will then perform In Flanders Fields and a Vancouver student from the Little Flower Academy will read the Poem of Remembrance. Dignitaries will lay wreaths at the Cenotaph.

After the ceremony, the parade will march west along East Hastings Street, turn right at Seymour Street and return to Victory Square via Cordova and Cambie Streets.

The City of Vancouver’s Victory Square services will be broadcast live on CTV Vancouver beginning at 10:30 a.m.

In addition to the event at Victory Square, Vancouver Parks and Recreation will also host Remembrance services:

• in Stanley Park at the Japanese Canadian War Memorial near the Vancouver Aquarium;
• at a temporary cenotaph in the outdoor plaza of the Britannia Community Centre beginning at 10:30 a.m. (due to reconstruction work at the Grandview Park), to be followed by a parade at 11:15 a.m. heading south on Commercial Drive; and
• at Memorial Park South, East 41st Avenue and Prince Albert Street.

During the Remembrance Day week (November 6 to 12, 2010), vehicles displaying BC veteran’s licence plates will be exempt from parking fees at City parking meters, in EasyPark parkades and surface lots and in Park Board operated parking facilities, including popular destinations such as Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park and the Aquatic Centre as well as a number of downtown community centres.