Retired Military Chief Launches Book: The Town Shows Up

Last night, my girlfriend and I attended the book launch of Gen. (ret) Wayne Eyre.  It was a very interesting night.  The actual speechifying was short, as Eyre identified and thanked a bunch of people in the room who were part of his career journey.  Eyre was known as the accidental CDS as he became the chief when his predecessor lost his position due to a credible accusation of sexual misconduct (that McDonald thought he was exonerated after the investigators said everyone was too drunk that night to prosecute demonstrated that McDonald was ill-suited for the job).  Taking the position with little preparation for the job, no handover by his predecessor, was immensely challenging, and I look forward to reading his take on that moment.  

I first met Eyre at an event at Queens University--the annual Kingston International Security Conference.  He was fresh off his tour in Korea and was just starting to be Army Chief.  Since then, I had many formal and informal meetings with him, including his appearing on the BattleRhythm podcast, interviewing him for my current project about Canada sans US, a phone call where he wanted to correct me about something I said on a different podcast episode (I was wrong because the government had not yet released its new policy, so my podcast became a venue for that announcement), standing next to him at the NATO summit in DC when Canada announced a lot more defence spending, and other events in Ottawa.  

I was not shy in these conversations about raising questions about his handling of the post, but to be clear, I have a heap of respect for how he served in that job.  The moment and the times were both quite challenging.  The sudden promotion, being CDS when a series of senior officers were disgraced, serving as chief as the world became much more threatening.  One of his most impressive characteristics was to be able to admit mistakes and course-correct as he went along.  He was thoughtful about the conflicting responsibilities he faced--to be an advocate for the Canadian Armed Forces but to respect civilian leadership and keep the CAF out of partisan politics.  Over the course of his tour, he became more outspoken about defence spending, which I found to be problematic.  

The book has already made a big splash as Eyre commented on his experiences with Justin Trudeau. Both in his comments to me as he signed my copy of the book and to the crowd, he indicated that the stories took things out of context.  For me, I am wondering how much of a violation of civ-mil norms it was, given that the document Eyre supervised as Chief of the Defence Staff about the responsibilities of the military profession, Fighting Spirit, includes retired officers (see text to the right).  I hope to find the time in the next few days to read the CDS chapters of his book so that I can evaluate this for myself.  

Despite the occasional disagreement with Eyre, I have immense respect for him. I have met all but one CDS since I started doing Canadian defence stuff in the mid 2000's--I have had amazing access here--Henault, Hillier, Natynczyk, Lawson, Vance, Eyre, and now Carignan.  Given the challenges, his very impressive learning curve, and his serious efforts to grapple with the conflicting imperatives of civil-military relations, I have come to see him as the best CDS during my time in Canada. I may or may not maintain that opinion after reading his book.  I lost a bit of respect for Robert Gates after reading his memoir, so we shall see.    

I was kind of surprised at how many people I knew at the event, although my girlfriend was not.  She gets that the defence community in Canada is pretty small.  So, she got to be introduced to the foreign minister/former defence minister Anita Anand, Senator Rebecca Patterson, Army Chief Mike Wright, former Ambassador Women, Peace, and Security (and cookie fan) Jacqueline O'Neill, and many others, and we had a delightful conversation with Jennifer Eyre, whom I met at a previous event. That Eyre got such great turnout, including the best Minister of National Defence of the past 20 years, says much about Eyre and how he treated the people around him.

Along the way, I learned about some new policy changes that may or may not improve civilian control of the military--something I will be looking into in the days ahead.  More on that sometime soon, I hope.