DIEPPE, N.B. - The wife of a Mountie killed in the earthquake in Haiti was presented with a UN flag when her husband's remains arrived back in his home province of New Brunswick on Monday.
Under an overcast sky, a small RCMP aircraft carrying the body of Sgt. Mark Gallagher touched down at the airport in Moncton, where his family and many others were waiting.
About 200 police officers, along with local politicians, took part in a brief ceremony at a Transport Canada hangar.
Mark Gallagher, 50, a well-known spokesman for the RCMP in the Maritimes, was in Port-au-Prince as part of a UN training force when the 7.0-magnitude quake struck on Jan. 12.
His body was found two days later in the rubble of his collapsed apartment.
"Mark, our hero, is back home in New Brunswick," Lisa Gallagher, his wife, said to reporters.
In the last week, she said, many people have come forward to tell her stories about her husband, virtually all of them describing a kind man with knack for helping others.
"The hundreds of people who have signed condolence books either in person or online are truly appreciated," she said.
"It may be a little while before we are able to read them but we look forward to the day that we can sit down as a family ... and read all the wonderful things people remember about Mark."
For Cpl. Christine Briand, the chance to present the UN flag was an important and emotional task.
Briand was serving with Gallagher in Haiti and was in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck two weeks ago.
"Seeing a place like this crumble in split seconds is something I hope nobody gets to witness," she said.
She described the ensuing search for survivors as "horrible."
"There were two of our colleagues that we couldn't find, and Mark was one of them," Briand said.
"It was very painful. We kept hoping and hoping because we kept on pulling people out that were alive and we kept hoping that we would find them too," she said as she began to cry.
The other Mountie killed was RCMP Supt. Doug Coates, the acting commissioner of the UN mission in Haiti.
Gallagher's son, Shane, was presented with his father's RCMP Stetson by Deputy Commissioner Steve Graham.
A lone piper played as eight RCMP officers in their red serge carried the casket from the airplane to a waiting hearse.
After the ceremony, a motorcade travelled to Woodstock, N.B., where an RCMP regimental funeral will be held Thursday at St. Gertrude's Roman Catholic Church.
