No Peace to Keep

Heroes Remember

No Peace to Keep

Transcript

Interviewer: When you find, you arrive in Rwanda with a peacekeeping mission, can you share that experience with us? Well, my arrival in Rwanda it was really clear that it wasn't made it clear to me that it was not a peacekeeping mission. I wasn't there to make peace or to keep the peace. I was there to try, to try to survive and try to, to help an organization that was faulting to the extreme, and that was the UN had defaulted any responsibility. General Dallaire was, was left alone with a handful of, of people, and it was, it was our focus was to help him out and, and try to support his endeavour. There was no UN, there was no peacekeeping. It took 100 days before we could, you know, try to establish some sort of a peace environment, and it was only because one of the one of the two sides in the confrontation had decided to flee the country. It was not out of the making of the UN that did take place. General Dallaire obviously had a lot to do and say about it, and, and that was OK, but there was no peacekeeping. Interviewer: What was it, if it wasn't peace keeping? It was an aberration of, of life. Seeing people die or dead, in most cases. Dealing with orphans, dealing with injured people, with no resources. Trying to, you know, even for us we had to survive sometimes on, on eating with perished, perished goods or whatever we could find. So, there was no support and it was very difficult, and we tried to the best we could help people that were in need, try to protect some, and I think the, not the UN, but I rather would call the group that was with General Dallaire was successful in doing that, as we had some African troops that did very well with regards to that, and, and that was OK. That was a very small success compared to, to the results. But that's all we could do, and that was very, was very hard and my peers you know often risk an awful lot to try to achieve smaller results. Interviewer: What risks might have been involved to achieve those results? The risk of being injured, of being killed, those were prevalent daily, and many of my peers faced them on a regular basis in trying to help people out. So those are, you know, when you are in an environment like this with no rules of engagement, very little support, even your own country seems to have forgotten you, it makes things a little different, and you sort of wonder, what am I doing here, and I had at the time an 18-month-old daughter I had left behind and I had promised myself I would come home to her. So I was prepared to take whatever action there was needed to, to come home.

Description

Mr. St. Denis describes the situation peacekeepers found themselves in while in Rwanda. They were practically abandoned by the UN and Canadian Government, with no real peace to keep and made to witness atrocities.

Jean Yves St. Denis

Mr. Jean Yves St. Denis grew up in Rodden, Quebec. He decided university wasn't for him, so he enlisted with the Canadian Army after graduating from high school in 1986. Mr. St. Denis had a very diverse 21 year career with the Canadian military, serving in Calgary, Germany, Ottawa, Rwanda, and Valcartier. While in Rwanda, Mr. St. Denis worked closely with General Dallaire, and witnessed many atrocities which affected him deeply for a long time after his return to Canada. With three overseas peacekeeping missions to his credit, Mr. St. Denis retired from the military in 2004, at which time he began working for Shell Canada.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 3:47
Person Interviewed:: Jean Yves St. Denis
War, Conflict or Mission:: Canadian Armed Forces
Location/Theatre:: Rwanda
Battle/Campaign:: Rwanda
Branch:: Army
Units/Ship:: Royal Canadian Horse Artillery
Rank:: Major

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Date modified:: 2019-04-03