Lieutenant-Colonel Kevin Mead and Lieutenant-Colonel Trevor Waaga (left) during a B.C. Dragoons ceremony in City Park, May 29, 2022.

(CARLI BERRY / iNFOnews.ca)

The former B.C. Dragoons commanding officer spoke about the importance of holding public ceremonies without being sidelined by those with political agendas.

“Parading in City Park at the cenotaph is not only a privilege, but I believe it to be necessary,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Kevin Mead, of Kelowna, during a change-over ceremony welcoming Lieutenant-Colonel Trevor Waaga as the new commanding officer for the Dragoons, Sunday in Kelowna's City Park.

“The last time there was a gathering at the cenotaph, was last Remembrance Day when protestors took advantage of a solemn occasion to leverage political agendas in disgrace. Today is as much about re-establishing this venue for its intended purpose as much as it is bringing the regiment into the public eye,” Mead said.

Charges were laid against Linda Denise Jackson in April after protestors brought a microphone and speaker to the cenotaph in Kelowna last Nov. 11 during a private ceremony honouring veterans to rant about COVID-19 restrictions. Their actions were widely condemned. 

This is the first time the Dragoons, a primary reserve armoured reconnaissance regiment based out of Kelowna and Vernon, have been able to hold a public ceremony since prior to the pandemic in 2019.

“Your regiment serves this community,” Mead said.

“As the pandemic emerged and the rest of the world closed its doors, this regiment learned to train and operate in an unknown environment where the enemy is microscopic,” he said, adding they supported the provincial and federal governments with quarantine operations, wildfire firefighting across the province last summer and flooding in the Lower Mainland last fall.

“Soldiers of the regiment have served every major operation in recent history from several different operations in the Balkans, multiple combat tours in Afghanistan and most recently, operations in Ukraine and Lafia,” he said.

“What you see with the news with the ongoing war in Ukraine represents the environment of which we journey,” he said.

The B.C. Dragoons are the only primary reserve army unit in the Interior, he said.

Marchers during the B.C. Dragoons commanding officer's change-over ceremony in Kelowna, May 29, 2022.

(CARLI BERRY / iNFOnews.ca)

As part of ceremony, the Dragoons marched to City Park from their regiment headquarters at 720 Lawrence Avenue. Following the ceremony, they marched back to headquarters along Leon Avenue. 

Waaga was born and raised in the Okanagan and joined the B.C. Dragoons in 1996. Through the years within the regiment, he has been deployed numerous times in the country and internationally including for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, in Afghanistan and in 2019, to Ukraine as the chief operations officer with Task Force Ukraine. He was also a company commander during COVID-19 in B.C. and the Yukon.

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