Browse "Peacekeeping"

In 1993, during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, Canadian peacekeepers with the United Nations (UN) advanced into disputed territory in Croatia with orders to implement the Medak Pocket ceasefire agreement between the Croatian Army and Serbian irregular forces. Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (2 PPCLI), came under Croatian attack for more than 15 hours. In the firefight that ensued – the most significant combat experienced by Canadians since the Korean War – 2 PPCLI held its ground and preserved the UN protected zone. UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said the Canadian soldiers brought credit to their profession, saved lives, and enhanced the credibility of UN peacekeeping forces.

​HMCS Kootenay was a destroyer in the Canadian Navy. In 1969, an accident at sea killed 9 sailors and injured 53 others. It was the worst peacetime disaster in the history of the navy.

The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually for achievements that have significantly benefitted humankind. The prizes are among the highest international honours and are awarded in six categories: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, and economics. They are administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by institutions in Sweden and Norway. Seventeen Canadians have won Nobel Prizes, excluding Canadian-born individuals who gave up their citizenship and members of organizations that have won the peace prize.

The job holds less significance to the mandarins in Ottawa. Tremblay and his fellow soldiers from the Royal 22nd Regiment in Valcartier, Que., wound up five months of operations at the end of last week and began preparing to return home.

Peacekeeping is the term applied to United Nations (UN) military intervention operations. As a result of Lester Pearson's leadership in the 1956 Suez Crisis and Canada's role in the UN Emergency Force he helped create, Canadians have sometimes considered peacekeeping part of the country's identity. However, since the 1990s Canada's reputation as a peacekeeping nation has been complicated by scandal and by the failure of some overseas missions.

Project Ploughsharesis an organization founded in 1976 to promote disarmament and demilitarization, the peaceful resolution of political conflict, and the pursuit of security based on equity, justice and a sustainable environment.

In 1993, as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Somalia, Canadian soldiers from the now-defunct Airborne Regiment tortured and killed a Somali teenager named Shidane Arone. These and other violent abuses during the mission shocked Canadians and damaged the country’s international reputation. They also led to a public inquiry that revealed serious failures of leadership at the highest levels of the Canadian Armed Forces, kick-starting reforms aimed a professionalizing the officer corps.

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In 1956, in the crucible of the Suez Crisis, L.B. Pearson invented United Nations peacekeeping. The Canadian foreign minister did not do so alone, and peacekeeping as it evolved was not exactly what he had in mind.

The two Huey helicopters carrying Maj. Alain Gauthier and platoon commanders from Canada's Royal 22nd Regiment drifted low over the coastal flats of southern East Timor. Below, the giant leaves of banana trees swayed gently in what passes for breeze in the torpid tropical heat.