Military
De Chastelain was enrolled in the Royal Military College of Canada in September 1956 and graduated in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and a commission in Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI), two years before he became a naturalized Canadian. He started his military career, however, as a private in the reserves from January to September 1956, in the Regimental Pipes and Drums of The Calgary Highlanders. Serving on regimental duty in Canada, Germany, and Cyprus, de Chastelain attended the British Army staff college in Camberley in 1966 and was commanding officer of the Second Battalion PPCLI from 1970 to 1972. During the summer of 1973, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, he commanded Valcartier Army Cadet Summer Training Centre.
As a colonel, he commanded CFB Montreal for a two-year period ending with the 1976 Summer Olympics in that city. He was also Deputy Chief of Staff of the United Nations Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) and Commander of the Canadian contingent there. As a brigadier-general, he was successively Commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada, Commander of 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in Lahr, Germany, and Director General Land Doctrine and Operations at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.
As a major-general, de Chastelain was Deputy Commander of the Canadian Army (then called 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 the Defence Staff. In 1993, he transferred to the Reserves and was appointed Ambassador 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 Defence Staff, from which post he retired in December 1995.
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Famous quotes containing the word military:
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“In all sincerity, we offer to the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years, abject and true remorse. No words of ours will compensate for the intolerable suffering they have undergone during the conflict.”
—Combined Loyalist Military Command. New York Times, p. A12 (October 14, l994)
“There was somewhat military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)