"Gone but Not Forgotten"

Rick Hillier's legacy to military families

By Patrick Twomey

“GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN” is certainly a phrase that comes to mind when people in the military community think of former Chief of Defence Staff Gen (Ret’d) Rick Hillier. Largely credited as the architect of the renaissance of the Canadian Forces he still casts a large shadow over debates and discussions of the Canadian military. These debates largely focus on military or foreign affairs issues, but what is less commonly known is the great impact he has had in the way military families are perceived and treated both by the military and the larger Canadian community.

I recently had the privilege to sit down with Gen Hillier in his downtown Ottawa office within site of his former digs at National Defence Headquarters. It was an excellent opportunity to get his perspective on the changes to the perceptions of military families over his long career, and particularly over the last ten years.

When asked to give a quick synopsis of his family life throughout his career the first descriptor he came up with was “tumultuous.” Early on in his career there were many moves, more so than usually found in the CF today and he and his wife Joyce found themselves moving to different bases, provinces, and even out of the country with postings to Germany and the United States. One of the constants throughout his career was Joyce, whom he met at high school in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and the home she created wherever the Canadian Forces took them. As he recalled the early years of his career, which began in 1973 and through the eighties, were marked by the attitude that “if the army had wanted a soldier to have a family they would have issued you with one.” As he put it, the attitude was that “if you could not look after your family, you weren’t capable of being a leader in the Canadian Forces.” That is to say that family strife or stress was due to personal failure rather than “the stresses and strains of all the things [the CF] asked people to do.” This belief was backed up when Hillier recalls the birth of the family’s second son Steven. He was born in Germany and at that time Hillier was allowed to attend the birth, but then was promptly re-deployed with his regiment on an exercise.

To read more of this article get your subscription to Ubiquitous Magazine!