Grant Rinas video – (with transcript)

I believe the purpose of the Honour Guard is, is to remember two, two essential groups of people; our fallen, and the families of our fallen.

Why did you join the Honour Guard?

So, the main reason I joined the Honour Guard is a very personal experience I had with a member of a family of one of our fallen firefighters, and her name is Janet. Her experience was related to me at a visit that my parents had with them, they were family friends and Mum said ‘hey, why don’t you come over for coffee with us’. So Janet says to me one day, she said ‘You’re a firefighter?’, and I said ‘yes I am’. She said, ‘my brother was a firefighter’, and I said ‘oh, who’s your brother, maybe I know him’. She goes ‘no, he was killed a long time before you ever got on the job’. And I said ‘well, who is your brother’, and she said it was David Allan. And I said, ‘well of course I know David Allan’s name, and I know David Allan’s story’. So, in the course of conversation I asked her, I said ‘have you been to the memorial down at City Hall?’. And she said, ‘you know, I’m pretty old’, and I think she was 91 or 92 years old at the time, and she said ‘we’ve been down once, and it was first, first opened up’, and she said ‘my husband and I haven’t been back since’. So, I said ‘well look, I’ll take you down if you want to go’. And she said ‘you know, I’d dearly love to go’. So, I brought her down to the memorial, and… You know, interesting side story to this, you know, geared up in Number One’s with decorations, and I’m driving them down, and her husband’s sitting in the front seat with me, and he looks over at me and he says ‘oh, I see you’re wearing your decorations’. He looks at my uniform, and I said ‘yeah, you know, I thought it’d be a good day for that’. He says, ‘maybe I should have worn mine’, and I said ‘well, where did you get yours?’. And he kind of smiled, and he says ‘I got my first one on Juno Beach in 1944’. I thought, ‘wow, you’re in the presence of greatness here’, right, there’s a lot more to people’s stories I guess. But.. so anyways, we ended up downtown at the memorial and, you know, Janet and Art, her husband, were really pleased with how, how our fallen were remembered, and what our Honour Guard did, and the whole circumstance. And Janet says to me in the course of conversation, she says ‘do you think there’s anybody here that would have remembered my brother, or worked with him?’.  So I asked a few of the more senior guys, and sure enough they introduced me to a, to a fella named Murdo MacKenzie, and I put Janet and Murdo together, and said, you know, we introduced them both and said ‘look, you know, Mr. MacKenzie, this is David Allan’s sister’. And, the connection was visual connection, it was eyes only, and there wasn’t a lot of talking. It was a really emotional moment. So I thought, you know, remembering the families is equally as important, maybe more so important, than remembering our fallen, and making sure those families are never forgotten either.

How did participation in the Honour Guard affect you?

So let’s take a minute, I’m just hearing some talking. That was really good. I think we’re clear.

How did participation in the Honour Guard affect you?

I was always concerned about my ability to maintain my composure, I think was probably the biggest thing that was a realizational moment for me. And attending the ceremony at Colorado in 2014 as a guest of the Guard, I felt that it was something I could do, but there’s no… there’s no harm in shedding some tears with your brothers and sisters either. Have I had that opportunity to go back and do that? Not since then. I’ve stood at the side of some of our own family, when they’ve lost family members who were firefighters, this past year, and it’s a very emotional thing, and it’s a…it’s just something that really brings home that feeling of family, that brotherhood and sisterhood that we do share as firefighters.

Is there a specific event or ceremony that holds special meaning for you?

There’s two ceremonies that hold meaning for me, that I’ve been able to both, attend both of them. Number one is the ceremony down at City Hall that we have for our own fallen firefighters, and secondly is the Colorado ceremony, and attending the Colorado ceremony as a guest of the Guard, that was the big trigger for me to join. I’d always thought about joining the Honour Guard, and it was something that I held off on. I never really thought that, that honestly I could have the ability to maintain that necessary composure. After attending that, sitting in a room where we’re doing our initial briefing, and there’s a thousand men and women in there, that you realize you’re kind of in the presence of some great people there. People that are all from across North America, and that are willing to make that trade. They go to work every day knowing that they could be the one’s going up on the granite wall, and they’re still, still there. And it felt to me like I was in the presence of some truly great people. That was the first, the first big thing for me about Colorado. The secondly was how everybody takes care of each other there. The Guardsmen take care of each other, the firefighters take care of each other, but most importantly, is we take care of those families. We look after them. We make sure that they’re not by themselves. We make sure that their needs are met. We make sure that, that they are looked after, and that they’re remembered as well as their, their fallen family member. So Colorado was a really big deal for me, that’s the impetus that I had to join the Honour Guard. I thought, you know what, I want to part of this, officially. I want to be part of this and do my share, and give back to our, our organisation as well.

The other aspect of Colorado that, that was really, kind of, a lot of fun, was with every large memorial gathering with firefighters, there’s going to be a pretty large wake associated to that. It was an opportunity to really get to know guys and gals from other Honour Guards across North America, and I had the opportunities to spend some time with Brent Jones, the Honour Guard Commander for the IAFF, and his Deputy Commander, and man, the stories that they shared of the things that those guys do on an international level. And they shared with me the story of, of going to the grounds where the nineteen guys from the Granite Mountain Hotshots fell, and how they looked after those guys, and they did eighteen consecutive funerals before the families said ‘you know what, you guys need to take a break’. And I thought, wow, you know what, I truly am in the presence of some great people! So, we, we did share a little bit of scotch that night and got to know these guys pretty well, and  I’ve stayed in touch with them. And you know, the friendships that you make on an international level, with other brothers and sisters that we have, is just amazing and that’s truly a gift to be treasured.