Public Memory: Remembrance Day in Vancouver
The annual Remembrance Day celebration takes place this Friday, November 11 – with the main ceremony taking place at Victory Square, where it has been held for the past 92 years. Details of the event can be found in the City’s media release below. Several smaller events are taking place in other public spaces around the city.
The photo shows Canadian soldiers practicing at Kitsilano Beach for D-Day landing. The image was taken in 1943.
In honour of our veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of Canada, the City of Vancouver is holding its annual Remembrance Day ceremony and parade at Victory Square on Friday, November 11.
Remembrance Day ceremony and parade
When: November 11, 2016 at 9:45 am
Where: Cenotaph at Victory Square
West Hastings Street at West Hastings Street and Cambie StreetCeremony program
The program begins with a performance by the Vancouver Bach Youth Choir and Sarabande starting at 9:45am.
At 10am veterans, military marching units and bands will be led to Victory Square by the Vancouver Flag Party for the cenotaph ceremony starting at 10:30am. Shortly afterward, there will be a combined performance by Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services and the Regimental Pipes and Drums of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada.
At 11am the Last Post will be sounded. There will be Two Minutes of Silence, during which a 21-gun salute by the 15th Field Artillery Regiment will be heard from Portside Park. Lament and Rouse will follow. The Royal Canadian Air Force will conduct a fly-past moments later, weather permitting.
The enduring In Flanders Fields will then be sung by the Bach Youth Choir and Sarabande and wreaths will be placed at the Cenotaph.
Parade route
The Remembrance Day parade will begin once the ceremony finishes. Participants will march west along Hastings past the reviewing stand between Homer and Richards, turning right at Richards, east on Cordova, then south on Cambie (Route 2 on the map below).
The veterans’ section of the parade will march Route 1, marching west along Hastings Street past the reviewing stand and disperse.
The Remembrance Day Service at Victory Square 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.
Additional ceremonies throughout Vancouver
Remembrance Day observances will also take place in different communities throughout the city on November 11.
- Memorial South Park Cenotaph, 41st Avenue and Windsor Street – 10:30am
- Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, 3811 Point Grey Road (can be viewed from Hastings Mill Park) – 10:30am
- Japanese Canadian War Memorial in Stanley Park – 10:40am
- Grandview Park, 1200 block of Commercial Drive – 10:45am
- Crab Park at Portside – 10:55am
- Chinatown Memorial; Keefer at Columbia Streets – 12:30pm