Remembrance Day ceremony in Halifax held to honour those who served

About a thousand people stood solemnly in the rain at a cenotaph in downtown Halifax on Monday morningtohonour and remember those who have served.

CBClivestreamedthe Remembrance Day ceremony at Grand Parade.

Mi'kmawElderMarlene Companionperformeda smudging ceremony, a first for theevent.

Thenational anthem was followed by a bugler playing the Last Post before a moment of silence at 11 a.m.Hosted by the Nova Scotia and Nunavut Command of the Royal Canadian Legion, people representing military groups, government and local organizations laid wreaths, as did members of the public.

Jean Noel laida wreath in memory of her brother, Master Cpl. Kirk Bradley Noel, this year's Memorial Cross recipient.He served in the navy before becoming a search and rescue technician.

Noelwas killed in 2006 during a training exercise when a Cormorant helicopter crashed offCanso, N.S.

Brian Carter, a retired RCMP officer, never misses a Remembrance Day ceremony. As a child, his father took him each year, but he said it wasn't until he served overseas himself that he fully understood the importance of the day.

Now he reflects on his four uncles who served in the Second World War and people he served with on international missions, including nearly eight months in Haiti.

"Remembrance Days are all important because we're still at war around the world. It never goes away and we need to understand that we have to try and stop that," Carter said.

"We have to remember because those of us who served dislike war more than anyone else, because we're the ones that are there."

It was Eduardo Schlosser's first Remembrance Day ceremony in Canada, having moved to Nova Scotia from Brazil earlier this year. He served in the Brazilian army and said it'simportant to learn about a country's history and thecontributions Canadians have made.

"I respect this history and what they did for the country," he said."I know that it's hard to be in the army, to defend a country. So I think it's very important to be here, even if it's not good weather to remember all of them."

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This year's ceremony markeda return to downtown Halifaxafter the 2023 event was moved toSullivans Pond in Dartmouth while Grand Parade was adesignated encampment site amid the city's housing crisis. The municipality closed the site to tentslast winter.

The Royal Canadian Legion maintainsa list of ceremonies across the province. There werenine in the Halifax Regional Municipality, eight in Cape Breton and more than a dozen in communities across the mainland.

It's been 80 years since D-Day, which marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War. It has also been10 years since the end of the mission in Afghanistan, 60 years of peacekeeping operations in Cyprus, and the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force.