Almost 1,000 police and corrections officers along with sheriffs and border guards gathered in Stanley Park in their finery yesterday to pay their respects and stand post for their fallen comrades.
The two-hour memorial included a handful of pipe bands, a rifle salute and an artillery salute that fired twice into the air above Burrard Inlet, setting off car alarms in a nearby parking lot.
Steven Point, the province’s lieutenant-governor, was among the dignitaries who spoke at Brockton Oval yesterday.
“We in Canada enjoy a very high standard of peace and order in our country,” said Point, during the 12th annual provincial memorial service for fallen police and peace officers.
“Certainly there are times when that peace and tranquility is disrupted; it is at these times when we turn to our officers, the men and women in uniform.”
The ceremony began with a marching from the HMCS Discovery naval station on Deadman Island around Brockton Point.
Officers passed under a large Canadian flag suspended by two fire department ladder trucks.
Kevin Begg, an assistant deputy minister with the solicitor general’s ministry, said 106 officers had been killed in B.C. during the past 150 years.
