About a thousand people stood solemnly in the rain at a cenotaph in downtown Halifax Monday morning to honor and remember those who served.

CBC broadcast live the Remembrance Day ceremony at Grand Parade.

Mi’kmaq elder Marlene Companion conducted a smudging ceremony, a first for the event.

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

Jean Noël laid a wreath in memory of his brother, Maître Cpl. Kirk Bradley Noel, recipient of this year’s Memorial Cross. He served in the Navy before becoming a search and rescue technician.

Noel was killed in 2006 during a training exercise when a Cormorant helicopter crashed off the coast of Canso, Nova Scotia.

Brian Carter, a retired RCMP officer, never misses a Remembrance Day ceremony. When he was a child, his father took him every year, but he said it wasn’t until he himself served overseas that he fully understood the significance of the day.

He thinks now of his four uncles who served in World War II and the people he served with on international missions, including nearly eight months in Haiti.

“Remembrance Days are all important because we are always at war in the world. It never goes away and we have to understand that we have to try to stop this,” Carter said.

“We have to remember this because those of us who have served hate war more than anyone, because we are the ones who are there.”

This was Eduardo Schlosser’s first Remembrance Day ceremony in Canada, after moving to Nova Scotia from Brazil earlier this year. He served in the Brazilian army and said it was important to know the history of a country and the contributions of Canadians.

“I respect that history and what they did for the country,” he said. “I know it’s hard to be in the military and defend a country. So I think it’s very important to be here, even if the weather isn’t good, to remember each and every one of them. ‘them.”

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This year’s ceremony marked a return to downtown Halifax after the 2023 event was moved to Sullivans Pond in Dartmouth, while Grand Parade was a designated encampment site amid the housing crisis in the city. The municipality closed the site to tents last winter.

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

It’s been 80 years since D-Day, which marked the beginning of the end of World War II. It is also 10 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.