Canadian UN peacekeeping veterans in Cyprus remember their 28 colleagues who did not come home alive

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During the Last Post bugle call at Wolseley Barracks in Nicosia, George Slade, wearing a blue United Nations peacekeeping beret, his chest festooned with military medals, used a cane to struggle to his feet to honour the Canadian soldiers who died in Cyprus. He saluted during the sombre ceremony.

At 91, he was the oldest of the 100 or so Canadian veterans to attend the 60th anniversary of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cyprus. The Canadians were there in force from the start of the UN mission, in 1964, until they withdrew in 1993. Their job was to patrol the demilitarized UN Buffer Zone separating Greek Cypriot fighters in the southern part of the island from the Turkish Cypriots in the north.

Mr. Slade was a member of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals when he was in Cyprus in 1966 and had to endure long, exhausting flights from Canada to attend the reunion. “I just wanted to see my military friends once again,” he said.

The veterans, most of them in their 60s, 70s and 80s, know that their 2024 Cyprus reunion will almost certainly be their last, making this event especially poignant. “When I was saluting, I was thinking of my father and all the others who served in the military in the past,” Mr. Slade said. “I thought of all their lives, and all those who died to make our country a safe democracy.”

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He comes from a long line of soldiers. His father, also named George, was a navy man in the First World War and came home wounded. Mr. Glade himself served in Korea after the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953. Later, he served with the UN Emergency Force in Rafah, in the Egyptian Sinai. “I have seen a lot, but it was pretty calm by the time I reached Cyprus, though we often heard gunshots between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots,” he said.

During their three-decade mission in Cyprus, 28 of the 28,000 Canadians who served on the island died, most of them through accidents such as vehicle rollovers, accidental shootings or natural causes. Two of them were killed in firefights in 1974, when Turkey invaded Cyprus. Nine of the Canadians who died are buried in Cyprus.

“The stories shared, places visited and memories created will remain with us as enduring reminders of the sacrifices made here – and the hope that continues to inspire us all,” Canada’s ambassador to Greece and high commissioner to Cyprus, Karine Asselin, told the veterans, dignitaries and latest generation of UN peacekeepers at the Remembrance Day ceremony.

Cathi Corbett, a Canadian who lived in Cyprus between 2006 and 2010 when she was married to the then Irish ambassador, said the Canadians are fondly remembered by the older generation of Greek Cypriots. “They would say that if the Canadians had not secured Nicosia airport, the Turks probably would have taken all of Nicosia and maybe all the way down to the south coast,” she said.

The Canadians were also remembered for their mischievous sense of humour, she said. When they departed in 1993, they redecorated the statue of Markos Drakos, a Cypriot who fought against British colonialism in the 1950s. The statue shows him about to toss a grenade. The Canadians put a tennis racket in one of the statue’s hands and a tennis ball in the other.

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