Victoria police Const. Ian Jordan spent almost half his life in an unresponsive state after his cruiser was struck during a routine call on Sept. 22, 1987. At his funeral on Thursday, Jordan’s family and the police community paid tribute to the first half: The life of a loving husband, a doting father and a dedicated police officer.
Hundreds of officers from the Victoria Police Department and across Canada and the U.S. marched in a procession from Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre on Caledonia Avenue and south on Quadra Street to Christ Church Cathedral for the 2 p.m. funeral.
Flags at the church, the police station and city hall flew at half mast. A giant Canadian flag hung between two fire ladder trucks on Quadra Street.
> Photo gallery: Honouring Victoria police Const. Ian Jordan
Eight police pallbearers carried Jordan’s flag-draped coffin into the church, followed by officers carrying his hat, service belt and badge. His wife, Hilary Jordan walked into the church with an arm wrapped around the back of her son, Mark Jordan, who was 16 months old at the time of the crash that changed his father’s life.
“I aspire to live my life in a way that will touch as many lives as he did,” Mark Jordan, 32, said in his eulogy.
He thanked his mother for her unconditional love and dedication to his father. He thanked the nurses and doctors at Glengarry extended care hospital who cared for his father from 2003 to his death on April 11.
Jordan died at age 66 after suffering complications from a lung infection.
The 1,000-seat church was filled with family, friends, police officers and some who had never met Jordan but wanted to pay their respects.
In his eulogy, Victoria Police Chief Del Manak addressed Jordan’s son.
“Mark, your dad loved you deeply. I’m told that every time he talked about you, he had a smile on his face.”
Many officers used the phrase “friend for life” when they talked about Jordan, Manak said. “We never let Ian forget that he was one of us and that we had his back.”
Manak recounted a story from Jordan’s early days on the force, when he asked close friend Sgt. Ole Jorgensen, a dog handler, to bring his police dog to a friend’s birthday party.
Much to Jorgensen’s embarrassment, his dog Radar urinated on a guest.
Jordan told his friend: “Your dog has good instincts, I never liked that guy anyway,” Manak said, to laughter from the crowd.
Speaking after the funeral, Bill Snowdon, now 87 and Victoria’s top cop at the time, said the day Jordan was hurt “was the saddest day in my 11 years as chief.”
Jordan, then 35, was supposed to be heading home to his wife and son early that morning when a report came in of a possible break-and-enter on Fort Street. Jordan hopped into his cruiser and left the old Victoria police headquarters on Fisgard Street.
Heading east on Fisgard, his cruiser was T-boned by a cruiser heading south on Douglas, driven by Jorgensen.
The crash left Jordan with a traumatic brain injury and paraplegic. He never regained consciousness.
The room at Glengarry Hospital where Jordan spent the end of his life was far from a place of quiet solitude, said Rev. Andrew Gates in his homily.
At times one could hear the crackle of a police radio, the songs of his music therapist or even bagpipes, a tribute to Jordan’s decade playing the instrument in the Canadian Scottish Regiment Pipes and Drums Band beginning in 1975.
Old friends, like Jorgensen, would come in with updates on the department or their own lives. His mother came every day until her death in 2009. His wife would celebrate birthdays and anniversaries by holding his hand and talking to him.
Gates said he visited often and always wondered whether Jordan had any awareness of what was going on around him.
“I knew Ian was trapped inside that body,” Gates said. “I wondered if he recognized me or knew who I was.”
Victoria police chiefs and officers would come and go and in 2016, Manak updated Jordan’s shoulder patch to reflect the new design and made him a new plaque.
It was a symbol that Jordan would never be forgotten by his fellow officers, that he was still part of the family, Manak said.
Manak said he “knew in his heart” that Jordan understood that his family was by his side daily.
Jordan was born on March 5, 1952, in Arcola, Sask., to Harry and Marion Jordan. Harry Jordan’s job as an RCMP officer had the family on the move in Jordan’s early years but the family settled in Victoria in 1965.
Hilary Jordan met her husband when the two were in Grade 12. She remembers skipping class at Oak Bay High School to meet Jordan, who was at Victoria High School. The two fell in love, were engaged by 19 and married two years later.
Jordan attended the University of Victoria in 1978 as a mature student and finished his degree in political science in just two years. He graduated from UVic’s law school in 1983, a path that his son, Mark, would follow decades later. Mark is a criminal defence lawyer in Edmonton.
A summer job with the Victoria Police Department prompted Jordan to put his law career on hold to join the force.
Snowdon remembers hiring Jordan, who was sworn in as a Victoria police officer on Oct. 22, 1984.
“He was the epitome of what a police officer should be,” Snowdon said. “He was a shining light for a lot of guys.”
He had dreams of joining the foreign service one day, but officers who worked alongside him saw an inevitable rise to police chief.
“I said to my wife, ‘He’s going to be the chief one day if he wants to be,” Snowdon said.
At the closing of the funeral, after the Canadian flag atop his coffin was folded up and handed to Hilary Jordan, a moment of silence was interrupted by the chirp of a police radio: “Paging Const. Ian Jordan. End of watch, April 11, 2018.”
