Challenges

 One of the legacies of the Cold War was the development of the Canadian Rangers as a military force, locals in remote areas, particularly the north, maintaining defense in out of the way places.

This is a Howitzer.

The path ahead includes banner photographs overhead of Cold War leaders of the 1980s.

One of the real monsters of the time. Oh, and a Soviet tank.

In some ways, that last decade of the time was its most dangerous.

This is a section of the Berlin Wall. After the fall of the Wall, the Canadian government hosted a conference of foreign ministers from East and West Germany, the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France to lay out the course for the reunification of the country. This section of the wall was later given by Germany to Canada, and now resides here. A fitting location, I think.

After the whirlwind events of 1989 changed everything, it seemed possible to believe in a new world. But the 1990s would bring their own perils.

The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 would lead to the Gulf War, with an international coalition carefully formed by American President George Bush to liberate the country. Canada was part of that coalition, sending military assets as part of Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Ted Zuber, who I mentioned a couple of posts back, went back to war as a commissioned war artist. This is his painting Loaders.

Desert Storm would end in a resounding victory, a near perfect execution of military strategy.

For Canadians as the decade continued, peacekeeping missions would be undertaken in other parts of the world. One of the darkest chapters in that time was the genocide in Rwanda, where Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian general, led a UN mission that could do little more than bear witness as two sides of the country descended into a madness of genocide.

And these are the tools of that genocide.