General John de Chastelain

General John de Chastelain is a retired Canadian Forces officer, the former head of Canada's military and former ambassador to the U.S. He has also played a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process and in crafting the Good Friday accord, which created a new legislature for Northern Ireland.

De Chastelain was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1937, the son of a Scottish oil engineer and an American author. Both his parents worked secretly as British spies during the Second World War.

De Chastelain went to Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland, before following his parents to Canada when he was 18. There, he had the choice of going to university at Oxford or at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. He chose the latter and, in 1960, earned a degree in history and a Canadian army commission. He served with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) until 1966, when he attended the British Army Staff College.

De Chastelain rose quickly through the ranks. As a Canadian Forces colonel, he was commander of CFB Montreal for two years. He later led Canada's contingent in the United Nations Force in Cyprus.

When he was promoted to brigadier-general, de Chastelain commanded the Royal Military College and later the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group in Lahr, Germany. After another promotion, to major-general, de Chastelain was deputy commander of Canada's army. As a lieutenant-general, he acted as assistant deputy minister of defence for personnel.

In 1989, he was promoted to general and appointed chief of defence staff, Canada's highest military rank. In 1990, he supervised negotiations with Mohawks during the two-month Oka crisis, a standoff between aboriginals and the military over the use of Mohawk burial grounds. The solution included the destruction of some of the Mohawks' weapons, a theme he would later revisit in Northern Ireland.

Later, de Chastelain was in charge of the Canadian Forces during the Gulf War and during a 1992 peacekeeping mission in Somalia, during which members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment tortured and killed a local teenager. An inquiry into the Somali's death later said de Chastelain had "failed as a commander" in his role as chief of defence staff.

In 1993, he transferred to the Canadian Forces Reserves and served as Canada's ambassador to the United States, a role usually reserved for high-ranking diplomats. The next year, he returned to the regular Forces and was reappointed chief of defence staff. He retired from the post in December 1995.

Since shortly before his retirement, de Chastelain has been involved with the peace process in Northern Ireland and is chair of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. He helped forge the Belfast agreement, the blueprint for peace in Northern Ireland, signed on Good Friday, 1998.

Although he was initially optimistic about the paramilitary group meeting the May 2000 deadline for disarmament, it didn't happen. In a rare public address in June 2000 to the Canadian Club of Toronto, de Chastelain said the process was facing delays, but peace in Northern Ireland was still possible.

"The euphoria which greeted that agreement has now been replaced by a concern that what it achieved may be lost and what it promised might never be delivered," he said.

De Chastelain has been careful to maintain neutrality in the few public statements he does make to avoid offending either side.

In 2003, after the Irish Republican Army destroyed a cache of weapons following the announcement of an election date in Northern Ireland, he would only say, "The commission has witnessed a third event in which IRA weapons are put beyond use in accordance with the government scheme and regulations."

In 2005, when the IRA announced that it would give up violence for good, there was no immediate comment from de Chastelain.

Despite this taciturn reputation, de Chastelain guest-hosted the VE Day episode of CBC Radio's The Current in May 2005.