De Chastelain -Great Canadian

Since November 1995, de Chastelain has been involved in the Northern Ireland peace process and since 1997 he has been Chairman of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, which is responsible for ensuring the decommissioning of arms by paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. He has made an impact on the way that Britain has viewed the IRA since the decommissioning has begun. As part of the Good Friday Agreement an independent neutral adjudicator was selected to look over the disarmament of Republican and Loyalist paramilitary weapons in Northern Ireland. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Forum of Federations, the global network on federalism.


De Chastelain was born in 1937 in Romania of a Scottish father and an American mother. He immigrated to Canada in 1955 and was became a citizen in 1962. De Chastelain is married, and he and his wife MaryAnn (née Laverty) have two children, Duncan and Amanda, and five grandchildren. De Chastelain was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh, at Mount Royal University in Calgary and the Royal Military College of Canada. He graduated in 1960 with a BA in history and was commissioned to the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. In 1970 he was commanding officer of the Second Battalion PPCLI. He was also Deputy Chief of Staff of the United Nations Force in Cyprus and Commander of the Canadian contingent there. As a brigadier-general, he was successively Commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada, Commander of the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in Lahr, Germany, and Director General Land Doctrine and Operations at National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa.

As a major-general, he was Deputy Commander of the Canada Land Force then called Force Mobile Command) and Commander of the Mobile Command Division, which was exercised as such in 1985 on Exercise RV '85. As a lieutenant-general, he was Assistant Deputy Minister for Personnel, and then Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff. In 1989, he was promoted to the rank of general and appointed Chief of Defense. In 1993, he transferred to the Reserves and was appointed Ambassadors to the United States. In 1994, he was recalled to Regular Force duty after the departure of Admiral Anderson, and re-appointed Chief of the Defense Staff, from which post he retired in December 1995.

In 1985, de Chastelain was appointed Commander of the Order of Military Merit and in 1991, Commander of the Order of St. John; in 1993, he received the Commendation Medal of Merit and Honour of Greece, and was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada; in 1993, the was appointed Commander of the Legion of Merit (U.S.A.), and in 1999, he was made a Companion Of Honour from the British Government. General John de Chastelain was a recipient of the Vimy Award, which recognizes a Canadian who has made a significant and outstanding contribution to the defense and security of Canada and the preservation of our democratic values.

Romeo Dallaire- Rwanda and the World's Responsibility

Romeo Dallaire, general; commander of Rwanda international peacekeeping mission :"no human is more human than any other".

Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire was born on June 25, 1946 to a Canadian non-commissioned officer and a Dutch mother in Denekamp, Netherlands. He came to Canada at the age of 6 months and spent his childhood in Montreal. He discovered in 1971 when he went to apply for a passport that he was not actually a Canadian citizen and then took steps to become officially Canadian. In 1963 he enrolled as a cadet at Le College Militaire Royale de Saint-Jean and he graduated fro the Royal Military College of Canada with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. He has been a Canadian Senator, humanitarian, author and a retired general.

He served as Force Commander of UN AMIR during the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis and Hutu moderates about which he wrote the book “Shaking Hands with the Devil’. The atrocities and the lack of power he felt in the face of the horror combined with the lack of will of those who were in charge of the mission, left him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and he attempted suicide after returning to Canada. This has made him an outspoken advocate for mental health intervention for Canadian soldiers. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies and Co-Director of the MIGS “Will to Intervene Project” that recently released a policy recommendation report called “Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership and Action to Prevent Mass Atrocities”.

IN 1995 he won the Vimy Award. In 1996, Dallaire was made an Officer of the Legion of Merit in the United States, the highest military decoration for his service in Rwanda. Dallaire was also awarded the inaugural Aegis Trust Award in 2002, and on October 10 of the same year, he was inducted as an Officer in the Order of Canada. He was ranked 16th in the CBC’s “The Greatest Canadian’ program which placed him as the highest ranked military figure. He is also the 25th recipient of the Pearson Peace Medal which was awarded by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. In 2006, Daillare was awarded the Human Security Award from the Centre for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California, Irvine. He has also received numerous doctorates from Canadian and American Universities including: U of Saskatchewan, St. Thomas U, Boston College, The U of Calgary, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Athabasca U, Trent U, U of Western Ontario, Simon Fraser U, U of Lethbridge, Ryerson Polytechnic U,the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY).His book "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda", was awarded the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2004.

For more information about this amazing Canadian, please see his website at:
http://www.romeodallaire.com/

If I didn’t love Michael Buble before I do now!