The special blue beret

Hey everyone, this year is the 75^th anniversary of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping. Why are we honouring our brave peacekeepers? Because what they do is important!

The very first UN peacekeeping mission started in 1948. More than 125,000 Canadian Armed Forces members have taken part in these efforts over the years. Peacekeepers are soldiers who go to troubled places to calm things down. They are sort of like referees in a hockey game.

Referees wear striped shirts so people can tell them apart from the players. But how can people easily know who is a peacekeeper and who is a regular soldier? The solution to this challenge had a Canadian connection.

The first large-scale UN peacekeeping mission was in Egypt in 1956. But the Canadian peacekeepers’ uniforms looked a lot like the uniforms worn by the British soldiers who were part of the fighting. What could be done to help figure out who was who?

The answer was to give the UN peacekeepers special blue headwear so they stood out from the crowd. Decades later, blue berets and helmets are still worn by brave UN troops around the world.