5th (British Columbia) Field Artillery Regiment, RCA was officially formed as a battery when it was authorized on 17 October 1954 as the ‘5th West Coast Harbour Defence Battery, RCA’, through the amalgamation and conversion of the 5th (British Columbia) Coast Regiment, the 120th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery, the 75th (British Columbia) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, the 155th, 156th and 160th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Batteries, and the 8th Anti-Aircraft Operations Room. However, it traces its gunner roots to a much earlier time.

The possibility of British involvement in the American Civil War in 1861 created concern in Victoria. In response one hundred and thirty-one men enrolled in the Vancouver Island Volunteer Rifle Corps comprised a Rifle Company and an Artillery Company. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877 created great concern because the harbours of Victoria and Esquimalt were undefended. Beginning on June 10, 1878, four coast batteries were constructed; the task was completed on August 30, 1878. To serve these batteries, a Militia Order on July 19, 1878 authorized the formation of the Victoria Battery of Garrison Artillery. Primary role was the defence of Victoria and Esquimalt from sea borne attack. This was the beginning of the 5th Regiment’s history.

Volunteers from the 5th Regiment formed part of “A” Company, 2nd (Special Service) Battalion, the Royal Canadian Regiment in South African from 1899 to 1902. The Paardeberg Memorial inside the Bay Street entrance to Armoury commemorates the unit’s first casualties. During the Great War (1914-1919), seven hundred and seventy-seven officers and men of the 5th Regiment served in overseas units of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Most notable among them was General Sir Arthur W. Currie, who began his career as a gunner in the 5th Regiment and rose in rank to command the Canadian Army overseas. Several other officers and men of the regiment served the guns in the British West Indies and with the Siberian Expeditionary Force.

By midnight on August 26, 1939, all the batteries of the Victoria-Esquimalt Fortress were manned by the officers and men of the 5th (British Columbia) Coast Brigade, RCA. Until the end of the war some 7,000 men passed through the brigade to serve in units overseas.

Meanwhile gunners of the brigade continued their lonely vigil for an enemy who never arrived. When the call to arms sounded again in 1950 for service overseas during the Korean “police action”, men from the regiment answered. Men from the regiment have also served with United Nations units in Egypt, on the Gaza Strip, in Cyprus and the Former Yugoslavia.

The 5th Regiment has been called upon to perform duties “in aid of the civil power”. They assisted in maintaining law and order during the coal strikes at Wellington in 1890 and at Nanaimo in 1913. They assisted in recovery operations following the Point Ellice Bridge disaster of 1896, And in 1948 they helped to build and maintain the sandbag dikes to control flooding in the Fraser Valley. Also in 1996 the Regiment was called out to assist in medical evacuation during the blizzard that winter.

The 5th Regiment provides the official saluting battery for Victoria. The unit has fired salutes for visiting Royalty, for Graduation Parades of the Royal Roads Military College and for the official Opening of the Provincial Legislature, a custom, which originated on July 29, 1878.

Recognition of more than 100 years of service took place on Sunday, November 4, 1979, when the 5th (British Columbia) Field Battery, RCA proudly accepted the Freedom of the City of Victoria. On Friday 13th of September 1991, the regiment once again was raised to regimental status and designated the 5th (British Columbia) Field Artillery Regiment, RCA. The young men and women of the unit proudly wear the Gunner badge in the oldest continuous serving militia unit west of the Great Lakes.