History

The Royal Irish Fusiliers

The Royal Irish Fusiliers was an Irish infantry regiment of the British Army, raised originally as 87 Prince of Wales's Irish Regiment. It was one of eight Irish regiments raised and garrisoned in Ireland. It saw quite an amount of service in the Napoleonic Wars and became famous as the first British Army unit to capture a French Imperial Eagle in battle and now wear the Eagle Button. The regiment got its nicknamed, the Faughs, for their Irish war cry "Faugh-a-Ballagh" (Fág a' Bealach, meaning Clear the Way).

This Regiment

The original Vancouver Irish Fusiliers were housed in a drill hall near Stanley Park until it was destroyed by fire in 1961. The band's 2002 merger with the British Columbia Regiment (BCR) at the Beatty street drill hall enabled the preservation of the regement's Battle Honours and band name. The band maintains a proud sense of honour in representing the history of Vancouver's Irish Fusiliers.

The Great Wars		The Uniform
During the regiment training in Vernon in 1914 the Irish Fusiliers were recruiting		"A traditional form of dress in Ireland was the "leine - chroich". The leine - chroich was a tunic worn loose down to knee. The fabric was normally saffron coloured (a dye was extracted from the Crocus flower by the Celts of Northern Europe from at least the time of Christ). Over the saffron shirt a large heavy woollen cloak, known as the Great Irish Mantle, was worn.Through the centuries these articles of clothing came to be the saffron kilt and the great cloak of pipers in the Royal Irish Rangers." http://www.royalirishrangers.co.uk/uniform.html