Whistler and Squamish Remembrance Days 2016 – 2023

I’ve always found Remembrance Day in Canada to be a very moving event.  It’s held in the middle of November, a time when it’s cold and usually really uncomfortable to be outside, which I think brings home to hardships of our soldiers in the field.  My grandfather Brian and his brother Philip were both killed at the WWII battle of El Alamein in North Africa.  My mother’s uncles fought in WWI, all of them surviving, but suffering life altering injuries.  I always get emotional thinking of them. My own trauma from my experiences as a photojournalist in South Africa in the mid-1990’s always seem to bubble up to the surface as well.  Too many of my journalist friends have been killed or suffered life altering injuries in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and various African conflicts.  More have been lost to suicides and drug overdoses, the inevitable cost of sending young people to war.

I’ve been photographing the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Whistler for the old Whistler Question newspaper and then after that closed, I moved over to photographing the Squamish ceremonies for the Squamish Chief newspaper until I left Glacier Media at the beginning of the Covid epidemic.  In 2023, the Whistler Municipality asked me to photograph the ceremony at the new expanded cenotaph in the Whistler Olympic Plaza.

 

Brian Buchholz is a now retired Whistler fire fighter.  He was the driving force for installing the original Whistler cenotaph in front of the firehall, and still acts as the master of ceremonies for the Whistler ceremonies.

On October 22nd, 2014, a deranged homeless man somehow acquired an old lever action rifle and used it to kill Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, one of the soldiers guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa.  It was an act that shocked the entire country.  During the 2016 ceremony, Cpl. Cirillo’s cousin Ashante, who was living in Whistler at the time, asked to lay a wreath on his behalf.  After she laid the wreath, she and Brian shared this moment.

I had actually finished photographing the event, and since it was a very confined space and I’m a very big guy, I moved out to the road to get out of the way of the ceremony.  I could see that something was going to happen, but I couldn’t really see it through the branches of a large hedge on the road.  I snapped off about 10-15 shots, and this was the only one that turned out.

Both Jim and Milo are Canadians who fought in the Vietnam War.  Jim Schribner was a medic on an evacuation helicopter and spent years running the Whistler station of the provincial ambulance service.  Milo Rusimovic was a Recon Marine and went on to start the local Milo’s Market grocery store, which eventually evolved into the Nestors Grocery Store chain.  I’ve known both of these guys since I was a kid.

The old Whistler cenotaph site by the Fire Hall.   I was out on the road by the upper right of the frame when I took the photo of Ashante and Brian.

Chuck Blaylock, the guy in the Montreal Canadiens ball cap, was a neighbour and god friend of mine, and an incredible guy.  He had been a Canadian Airforce fighter pilot in the 1950’s, based in the arctic to intercept Russian bombers heading the US, and then went on to fly the first generation of 747’s for Air Canada.  He had some incredible stories to tell.  Sadly, he passed away a few years ago.

There’s something to stir the soul of any Canadian to see a squad of Royal Canadian Mounted Police parading in full red serge formal uniforms.

The Royal Canadian Legion leading the parade by the Squamish cenotaph.

Retired RCMP constable Tara Merria, who is currently a Whistler by-law officer, has been acting as the honour guard for the Whistler ceremonies for as long as I can remember.

In 2023, the municipality asked me to photograph the ceremony at the new cenotaph site at the Whistler Olympic Plaza.  Whistler growing so quickly, the old site was just too small.  Post Covid, this was the first time they had held a full sized ceremony and they wanted a record.  It was a little strange to be photographing an essentially editorial event for a private client.