I was fortunate to be promoted in 1990 and served for a year as Commander of Pacific Militia Area while simultaneously returning to my teaching career in North Vancouver. 1991 saw the introduction of a new Army structure in Canada and I found myself enjoying the commute from Vancouver to Montreal for the next three years; working as a part-time Reservist and serving as Chief of Staff Reserves and Reserve Advisor at the Army Headquarters (LFCHQ) in St Hubert. The Balkans (FRY) were the focus of much attention and I was proud of the outstanding performance of the Army Reservists who served there and who comprised up to 40% of most Army deployments. After three years I was back on the retired list and, as Sally often remarks, “a large black curtain descended and kept me in the dark about most things military” for a further three years.

Then, in August of 1997 while traveling in New Zealand and visiting Fred Wilson. I received a phone call from the VCDS asking if I would like to re-join the forces. Without hesitation I did so and was promptly promoted to Major-General, becaming Chief of Reserves and Cadets in NDHQ. Never having served in NDHQ, I was on a steep learning curve but was fortunate to have excellent staff throughout my branch. Sally’s sage advice was to teach part-time and travel to and from Ottawa during the other 33% of my life. This I did for three years and in 2000 retired once again, having acquired an in-depth knowledge of the NDHQ matrix, a modest knowledge of the workings of NATO HQ in Brussels and a lifetime supply of hotel cosmetics from the hundreds of days I enjoyed visiting other interesting places.

While serving in NDHQ Sally often accompanied me on visits and on NATO Reserve Forces Committee activities. She wisely retired from teaching two year before I, and was thus able to join me on many “field studies” and trips. We are still actively pursuing the answers to “Whither Canada?”.

Our travels since I retired from teaching in 2001 have given us a marvelous opportunity to experience Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Chile, Peru and Argentina for extended periods. We have also enjoyed the UK, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii as well as numerous cruise destinations for much shorter periods. The NDC “mingling” virus has taken hold.

We’ve retired to the Sunshine Coast (of CBC “Beachcomber” fame) and welcome visitors, both new and old, so if you are in BC please consider coming by, as we are only a 40 minute ferry cruise from Vancouver. We also look forward to seeing many of you in Kingston in September.

Our son and daughter are happily married and living in New Westminster and Portland respectively. Following in the footsteps of John McGrath, I am again back in uniform as the Honourary LCol of a Victoria artillery unit I served with in the 1960s.  Ubique.

The period since attending NDC has been “a tale of two cities”… Edmonton and Winnipeg.  In the fall of 1990, our family returned to Edmonton and I resumed employment at NAIT as Dean of the newly created Health Sciences Division.  Sherry also continued in her role at Alberta Family and Social Services as Adoptions Supervisor, eventually becoming responsible for the private adoption agencies in Alberta.  Joe and Kath embarked on their junior high and high school years.

At NAIT I found myself progressing through a series of interesting positions that I never expected to experience:  Executive Director of Development & Community Relations (the basket of external relations functions), Vice President of Administrative Services (with responsibility for the Institute’s $110 million budget), and eventually Vice President of Academic Services, a more natural fit with my technical background.

But after almost 30 years in the Alberta postsecondary education system, I began to look for opportunities for a career shift to something different at a time when I was still young enough to make a significant contribution.  This opportunity came in the fall of 1997 when the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a seven-year-old policy research “think tank”, had matured to the point of looking for its first Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.  By January 1998, after living and working in Edmonton for almost three decades, we sold our house and moved to Winnipeg.  Katherine was by this time in University in Toronto and Joe was living in Lethbridge, so Sherry and I relocated to a new city on our own.

Both personally and professionally our eleven years here in Winnipeg have been very rewarding.  On the personal front, we found ourselves starting totally afresh with respect to meeting friends, cultivating interests, and making commitments. Sherry had long wanted to take up painting. She volunteered at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and also took some drawing classes there.  She now has a small studio in the Exchange District of Winnipeg and has participated in several local art shows.  She is also Co-Chair of the WAG Travel Tours Committee, which plans and operates international trips as a fundraising activity for the Gallery. We have been fortunate to develop a very interesting circle of friends in Winnipeg, which includes a book club of four couples that we started eight years ago.

Professionally, IISD (see: http://www.iisd.org/ ) has afforded me a fulfilling career in a completely new field – sustainable development research. It has been truly satisfying to be a part of managing the growth and development of the Institute from a relatively small organization of approximately 40 staff and annual revenue of seven million dollars to a large-ish organization, for an operation of this type, with over 110 staff and Associates and annual revenue of 16 million dollars.  The IISD headquarters is in Winnipeg, with “satellite” offices in Ottawa, New York and Geneva.  It is an organization that is unique in Canada with significant influence internationally. My role as Vice President is to oversee the program of research, lead the strategic planning process, and guide the overall institutional development of IISD. In addition to the intellectual and management challenges, it also involves a certain amount of international travel.

While all this was happening, our children have grown up. Joe is currently living in Winnipeg and works as a tilesetter. Katherine and her husband Ken live and work in Nanaimo, and this past June produced our first grandchild, Case William Bartley.

I actually failed Course XLII so stayed two further years on staff to get it right – providing me the enviable opportunity to witness the antics of both Course XLIII and Course XLIV.  Thereafter, I was assigned as Chief of Staff of the 1^st Canadian Division, responsible for the training and operational readiness of the Canadian Army field force.  Following an uneventful tour in Somalia, I returned to Kingston as Deputy Commander 1^st Canadian Division, as well as Commandant of the Army Staff College (Ft Frontenac), looking after all those annoying young captains and majors who used to get in your way at the Officers’ Mess…when you weren’t on field trips.

By 1996, I had a choice between self-imposed exile or jail; I uncharacteristically chose wisely and spent 11 years overseas in five different NATO headquarters.  At NATO Headquarters Brussels, I worked with a team that developed a new command structure for NATO, which was approved in 1999, just in time to occupy a newly created Canadian Army colonel’s post in Izmir, Turkey.  During four years in Izmir, I was rarely in Izmir but rather, leading mobile training teams and conducting exercises in the Central Asian Republics, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East.  Whilst in Izmir, took six months of accumulated leave and deployed to Kosovo.  My job was originally to ensure Serb compliance with NATO imposed agreements and to keep the former KLA insurgents on a leash; it turns out I spent most of my time trying to bring the insurgency in the Presevo Valley of southern Serbia to a close – exchanging prisoners, delivering bodies, releasing hostages and drinking obscene amounts of slivovitz.

Moved to yet another NATO headquarters in Brunssum, The Netherlands, in late 2002 where, as Director of Staff of a 600-person multinational headquarters, I had was responsible for all the things I joined the army not to do – information/knowledge management; tasker management; conference services, management planning; budgeting; quality control of correspondence and, most important of all – protocol.  When General Hillier saw me I looked so ill he took pity on me and made me his Deputy Chief of Staff for the ISAF mission in Kabul in 2004.  In 2005, it was back to Brussels, this time as the Canadian Deputy Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee.  Whilst Hope revelled at the prospect of three more years in ‘the capital of Europe’ I was scheming my escape back to Afghanistan.  Hence, my 39^th year in uniform was spent out of uniform commanding the Canadian Strategic Advisory Team in Kabul.

I pretended to retire in Kingston in December 2008 but returned to work for the Afghan Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in March 2009, armed with the NDC definition of national security.  We travel extensively throughout the country, to include the Minister’s favourite province – Kandahar.  As a result, whilst Hope oversees the construction of a new house in Kingston, I continue doing what I love best – helping people in need.

As you will recall, I was your token class spy, being an employee of the super secret DND agency, the Communications Security Establishment of Canada, also known as CSEC. I was sent on the course to have my eyes opened, which was certainly the case. Touring and learning about twenty-some different countries other than Canada was one thing…but I learned as much again from the amazing group of Canadians, Americans, Brits, Aussies and Kiwis who were my course mates. I am pleased to say that I have maintained close contact with some and welcome any opportunity to catch up with any others whenever the opportunity presents.  Unfortunately, I will not be at the 20^th NDC reunion because of a planned trip to Italy which was already booked when the reunion date was announced. This brief update will have to do until the next reunion.

I returned to CSEC from NDC to become the deputy to the Director General of SIGINT. I subsequently had the opportunity to reorganize the place and oversee CSEC’s contributions to the Persian Gulf and Balkans wars before moving on to the position of CSEC Director General of Corporate Services. As you know, corporate services is not a job for the faint of heart or for those who crave praise for their accomplishments. After a bit, I was saved by being offered a job as CSEC’s Director General Policy and Plans and a project to strengthen and clarify CSEC governance, accountability, policy capacity and operational authorities as preparation for CSEC legislation.  As some know, CSEC legislation was obtained in 2001, spurred on by the fallout from 9/11.

When 9/11 occurred, I was wrapping up a divorce and working on secondment, as a visiting executive, to the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada, better known as APEX. What a great job! I got to work on files to improve executive compensation, resulting in some instant gratification, and to do a survey of baby boomer executives that twitted the bureacracy for not doing enough succession planning. However, the best part of the APEX job was the opportunity it presented to meet my new wife, Janet Hughson, who was the Deputy Executive Director of APEX at the time.

I returned to CSEC from APEX in early 2002 to become Director of Intelligence, responsible for overseeing CSEC’s intelligence response to the September 11 attack and CSEC’s analytic contribution to the fight against terrorism. This job certainly was the highlight of my career. I was then booted upstairs and finished off my time in government as CSEC’s Associate Assistant Deputy Minister of Signals Intelligence.

After my retirement in 2005, I did a little contract work for the Auditor General but soon lost my appetite for it. Why retire and then start replicating the life that you just left behind? I am now a full time retiree. I have been doing volunteer and community work and playing golf and travelling ever since. I have just recently become a Grandpa to a grandson from my youngest daughter, Robin, and will soon have a second grandchild from my oldest daughter, Heather. Life is good!

To all of my Course XLIII confreres, I wish you and yours the very best and look forward to seeing you all again in the near future.

Life after NDC has in fact two chapters: the first relates to my last years in the military including a five year posting to Heidelberg on staff of the resident NATO Headquarters during which the highlight was witnessing the reunification of Germany.  Upon return to Canada in 1995, I was fortunate to work as Director, International Policy and, through a last minute change in retirement regulations, a one year assignment as special advisor to the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff where in the latter part, I had the pleasure of serving under Ray Henault, a future Chief of the Defence Staff and Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee.  A good way to end a long military career.

Chapter 2: but life goes on…

Upon retirement, the intent was to take six months off.  Then, after two months, the telephone rang.  So much for a quiet retirement and thus began an odyssey of over 10 years as a temporary government employee.

Initially I was asked to assume the position of Director of Operations in the secretariat responsible for planning and executing the Ottawa Landmines Conference.  Suffice to say this whetted my appetite for this type of project and within the next 5 years, as Director of Facilities and Operations, I participated in the organization of five high profile events including the 2001 OAS Summit and the 2002 G8 Summit held in Kananaskis, AB.  At the end of this latter event, I was ready to call it quits.  But then, the telephone rang…

A former regimental colleague working in what is now Public Safety called asking if I would fill in behind a staff officer who was going on parental leave – a short period, only nine months.  Then, the staff officer responsible for the NATO desk left the department – so the telephone rang again…

Four years later, I’m still there and travelling to Europe four times a year.  Interesting work but without buy-in at senior levels, a tread mill leading to frustration.  Retirement loomed again.  But in the modern age, in lieu of a telephone call, I received an email.  DND was beckoning and in light of the transformation, I agreed to join the Strategic Joint Staff.  Interestingly, I was recruited by an R22eR Colonel who was the son of the R22eR officer who enticed me to join the Regiment when I joined the Army.  Did I feel old???

As much as this was interesting, I was again lured back to Foreign Affairs to help plan the 2008 Francophonie Summit – the down side was I had to spend 15 months living in old Québec but in Dec 2008.  I ended probably one of the longest stretches of term employment in recent years.

But, then the telephone rang…

So now I am the Director General Planning for the 2010 G8 Summit and the North American Leaders’ Summit later the same year.

But next year, when this assignment is over I’m leaving the telephone off the hook!!

When I returned from NDC I was asked to start a ‘think tank’ for the Australian Army examining future conflict.  Within a few months I was promoted and posted to Sydney to be the Chief of Staff of Army’s national Training Command.  Two years later I was made the Military Secretary, responsible for postings across the Army, and held the position for just over a year before promotion to Major General as the Army Chief of Personnel.   That was to be my last parade in uniform.  I left in 1997 and went to work in the Veterans’ Affairs area.  We have a three-person Commission charged with administering our veterans’ entitlements, and for six years I was one of the Commissioners.  My responsibilities included overseeing the commemorations program, which meant I travelled with veteran missions to places like France, North Borneo, Crete, Egypt and Korea.

In 2003 I left the Commission.  Not being quite ready to retire I became an individual consultant and, after a task for the Office of Australian War Graves, I was asked to nominate for the position of the Director.  I have held the position for just over three years now, and will continue until the end of 2010, when I will be ready to retire.  Like Canada, we are members of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which looks after all our world war dead overseas.  My Office works with the Commission on Australian issues.  In addition it is responsible for commemorating the veterans whose death after war or conflict is attributed to their war service, and commemorating the Service men and women who have died in post-war conflicts or peacekeeping up to and including our current involvement in Afghanistan.  I have also been lucky in my time to have memorial projects on the Western Front in France, which is how Helen and I ran into the Labbes at Vimy.  On top of that, for the last three years I have had the honour to be the MC for Anzac Day services televised nationally from Gallipoli and France.  I guess that means my “15 minutes of fame” box has been ticked.

Since we settled back in Canberra in 1993 Helen has worked in small business with friends, which has allowed her to come on some of my work trips.  Personally, she is very busy on Committees for local garden clubs, craft groups, looking after her elderly mother and helping with the grandchildren.  Our children are all fine adults.  Michelle and Caroline are married with two and four children respectively.  Michelle and husband Mark are in the Public Service.  Caro with a young family is a full time mother, and husband Tim is a partner in an engineering firm.  Our youngest, Jonathan, is a Corporal Medical Technician in the Army.  He has just returned from a deployment to East Timor, which for the most part was thankfully quiet.  He would probably like to go to the next level with a job in Afghanistan.

The year in Canada was a memorable part of our lives.  The kids often recall their experiences in a different school system, and we in turn often reflect on those we met and the places the course took us, places we are unlikely to get to again.  We have been in a drought here for the last nine years or so and regularly envy your abundance of snow and water.  And speaking of envy, there are of course those Tim Horton maple -dipped donuts!!

Greetings from Lotus Land, Canada’s West coast. You all remember visiting Victoria, the capitol of British Columbia, and it is also our hometown. It was a natural move when I retired in 1992 after 35 years in the Canadian navy. We bought an old English, rose-covered cottage in Oak Bay close to the sea and have been happily ensconced here ever since. We garden intensely and live life to the full.

While most moved on from NDC, Mike McWhinney and I stayed on to fight the good fight. I had another good year as a globe-trotting director then moved to the Security Studies course for a year before retiring. So many of us left in 1992 that we had to purchase our own retirement gifts. There were rumours of moving NDC then closing it altogether floating around, the latter materialized. I wasn’t there to turn out the lights. Instead, I shifted to an academic life at the University of Victoria teaching Canadian and military history while I did a PhD. I finished that in 1999 and was hired by the Royal Military College of Canada to set up an extension program at the Naval Officers Training Centre (NOTC) Venture at CFB Esquimalt. It is a six course programme, two in history which I taught, and two sessions a year each lasting 4 months. Concurrently, I worked for the Directorate of History and Heritage at NDHQ conducting interviews in support of the official history of the Canadian navy. Two volumes have now been published and the third should be in print next year. Not desiring academic tenure, I was not running on the publish-or-perish wheel but I managed to have six articles published in learned journals and I was a guest lecturer during the naval section at the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College until its interest in history waned.

I decided to retire again in 2004, a decision prompted in part by health issues. I had a bicycling accident in 1995 that nearly did me in and both knees finally gave out with osteoarthritis. I had them replaced simultaneously and during the course of my rehabilitation we decided to vacation in Arizona. Being a sailor I knew I wouldn’t like it – wrong! We loved it immediately, bought a place in 2005, and now spend five months of the year soaking up the sun away from the “wet coast”. We live in a small park model home that is just like a ship – perfect you say. There are 1744 units in our resort in Mesa AZ and the action is non-stop; it’s like an NDC field trip on steroids. If I knew that I was going to have so much fun in retirement I would have taken better care of my body. We return to Victoria in April to rest.

Ginny is in good fettle, looking forever young and always being mistaken for my daughter. Our daughter, Elizabeth, married Karl Ullrich, a businessman here in Victoria and they have two lovely daughters, Emma(13) and Heidi(11). Karl owns Oak Bay Bicycle, a thriving bike shop situated in a new 4-unit complex that he built. Our son, Wil, is completing 20 years in the Canadian navy. He and his wife, Marketa, with our grandson, Hunter, live near Ottawa where he is posted. They have a second child due in late September.

Ginny and I are in good health, still very much in love and as busy as we please. We have been blessed by the Lord in so many ways. We regret we won’t be with you for the 20^th gathering. We will be in Halifax for a naval college reunion and celebrating 50 years since my class joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1959. What a great life!

We have adjusted to life in retirement by taking on a host of new interests. I am a Director of the Nanaimo Airport Commission where my particular expertise has been useful in securing provincial and regional funding for a runway extension (which will be completed this year); in improving the reliability of the airport in the bad weather months; and in the marketing of our airport to all of the air carriers.  I am also VP of our local Lions Club, where I organize a major fund-raising Concert every year in early August; I am becoming more and more involved with our Golf Club in organizing tournaments; and I even dipped my hands into politics this spring as the Campaign Manager for a Liberal candidate in the recent Provincial election.

Our two children are married and each have two children of their own (we now have three very busy grandsons and 1 calm granddaughter).  Eric is a LCol CF-18 pilot at the Air Division HQ in Winnipeg (although presently on a six month tour in Afghanistan) and Jacqueline is in Kingston taking a sabbatical from Physiotherapy to raise her children.

We won’t be at the reunion this year but Lucile & I wish all of you the very best and hope that if your travels bring you to BC, you will take the opportunity to visit us and savour the “good life”.

Only two years of that sadly, as I was promoted to Rear Admiral and sent back to Wellington as the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff and more work making another boss look good.  Some say it was good for rounding out my career, but the only rounding seemed to be around the midriff in response to all the representational cocktail parties and dinners that one got to attend, for one’s country of course.

A year later I was appointed as Chief of Navy and commenced the best three years imaginable.  Challenging in many ways, humbling in more, satisfying in most and rewarding in all.  I got to do things I had only dreamed of, even though some of my staff officers wished I had not dreamt them up.  I managed to travel to all the places the NDC had left off the itinerary, meet gifted people like Nelson Mandela and Gloria Arroyo, and participate in strategy, policy and politics at a level that clearly only the NDC could have prepared me for.

Every dream ends eventually of course, and I was released from harness after more than 41 years serving as man and boy.  The bride of 27 summers, released from the rigours of chauffeured limousines and first class travel, ran off with a tango dancer, but son Patrick (married, one grand-daughter) and daughter Christina (DINKY) still live close by.

I then started the next career in Risk & Emergency Management.  Initially I was with Auckland City and later as the Controller for the entire Auckland Region.  After five years I left that and became an independent consultant, contracting back to those same entities, and others, at twice the price for half the hours worked previously.  I then taught myself the mysteries of html, javascript, CSS and the like, and now spend most of my work time on web design issues in the same domain.

I was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2002 and then qualified to sit on the Bench as well as do all the routine JP stuff.  Being an office-holder in various positions on five local charities also takes up a lot of what passes for spare time.  However I still subscribe to the mantra of ‘show me an airline ticket and I’ll fly it’ and usually get to North America once a year and regularly to Australia.  Unfortunately Kingston is a long way to go for a beer and crusted beef tenderloin with truffle infused sauce, even with old friends, but if any of you need a high-priced consultant for a short all-expenses cost-plus task, just let me know.

I arrived at NDHQ at a time of great changes. Downsizing, rightsizing and dumbsizing were part of the daily routine of reorganizing the Headquarters. There were also many very important and politically sensitive projects in my area such as the North Warning System. I spearheaded a number of initiatives that lead to a complete restructuring of the informatics and communications domain of NDHQ and the CF as a whole. My position evolved into the Director General Information System Delivery and Support before I decided I had enough and retired from the CF in July 1996. Six months later I started a second career as a management consultant with the DMR Group that eventually became Fujitsu Consulting. In this new role, I conducted many IT management studies for a variety of government departments both at the federal and provincial level providing advice as to how to get the best value for IT investments. Military experience also became very useful in a study completed for DND and Veterans Affairs on the management of the Operational Stress Injury Support System. I finally retired from that second career in 2006 to fully enjoy my family and leisure activities such as tennis, golf, fishing and travelling.  Throughout this timeframe, I also sat on the RMC Club national executive committee for eight years and became President for a one year term in 2002-2003. This second retirement allowed me to dedicate more time to my aging parents and complete many extensive improvements to the backyard of a new smaller property in Gatineau such as the building of a garden shed, gazebo to house the new spa and a large patio. In 2008, upon the re-opening of CMR Saint-Jean, I was appointed on the new Board of Governors for that institution.

Louise retired from her position at the Sandy Hill CHC in 2003 after thirteen years of dedicated service to that community and with her two bad knees initiated the process to have both of them replaced as well as move us from the large home to a single level bungalow. Louise finally had her second successful knee replacement completed in 2008 just after we moved into the smaller bungalow in Gatineau where we now have much less housekeeping and property maintenance to do. She is now enjoying reading, travelling, and plans to restart golfing with me.

Our three children are now married and each have given us two beautiful grandchildren for a total of six (two boys and four girls) in the space of six years. Eric is now a communications and electronics engineer Lcol and back to NDHQ from two years of Staff College in Germany. Nadine has changed careers from teaching to the Public Service personnel management domain with the Public Service School. David is now an Army Logistics Major at Army HQ in Ottawa. It will be the first time in a long while that Louise and I will be able to enjoy all the kids and grandchildren in the Ottawa area and we are taking full advantage of it.