Photos of Barrie's 2026 Remembrance Day parade and ceremony

Residents, dignitaries, and those associated with the Canadian Armed Forces, Royal Canadian Legion, and other organizations gathered in Memorial Square in Barrie on Wednesday for the city's annual Remembrance Day Parade.

In 2026, the federal holiday comes 25 years after the beginning and five years after the end of the War in Afghanistan and weeks after a fire that took the lives of four service members at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta.

Barrie's ceremony took place at the city's cenotaph, which has the names of 224 fallen soldiers carved into the rock. The men hailed from Barrie, Innisfil, and Vespra (now known as Springwater).

Of those names, 142 dies while serving Canada in the First World War, 79 from the Second World War, two from the Korean War.

"They were Canadians with families, careers, friendships, ambitions, and plans for ordinary lives," Bob George, the event's master of ceremonies, said in prepared remarks. "They left those lives behind because their country was involved in conflicts that demanded extraordinary sacrifices. Some return. Some return wounded. Some returned carrying experiences that they would struggle to describe for the rest of their lives, and many never returned at all."