General Rick Hillier’s views on leadership evolved over his three decades as a soldier. Early in his career he watched as many of his superiors made bad decisions. Later he learned at the school of hard knocks as the head of emergency rescue operations in Canada and international task forces in eastern Europe and Afghanistan. Never one to be shy with his opinions, Hillier is as frank and straightforward in Leadership as he is in his #1 bestselling memoir, A Soldier First....

General Rick Hillier’s views on leadership evolved over his three decades as a soldier. Early in his career he watched as many of his superiors made bad decisions. Later he learned at the school of hard knocks as the head of emergency rescue operations in Canada and international task forces in eastern Europe and Afghanistan. Never one to be shy with his opinions, Hillier is as frank and straightforward in Leadership as he is in his #1 bestselling memoir, A Soldier First....

In the summer of 2008, General Rick Hillier retired as Chief of the Defence staff of the Canadian Forces. You could almost hear the sigh of relief in Ottawa as Canada’s most popular, and most controversial, military leader since the Second World War left a role in which he’d been as frank, unpredictable and resolutely apolitical as any of his predecessors.Born and raised in Newfoundland, Hillier joined the military as a young man and quickly climbed the ranks. He played a significa...

In the summer of 2008, General Rick Hillier retired as Chief of the Defence staff of the Canadian Forces. You could almost hear the sigh of relief in Ottawa as Canada’s most popular, and most controversial, military leader since the Second World War left a role in which he’d been as frank, unpredictable and resolutely apolitical as any of his predecessors.Born and raised in Newfoundland, Hillier joined the military as a young man and quickly climbed the ranks. He played a significa...

In 2008, Ryan Flavelle, a reservist in the Canadian Army and a student at the University of Calgary, volunteered to serve in Afghanistan. For seven months, twenty-four-year-old Flavelle, a signaller attached to the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, endured the extreme heat, the long hours and the occasional absurdity of life as a Canadian soldier in this new war so far from home. Flavelle spent much of his time at a Canadian Forward Operating Base (FOB), living among his fellow ...

Many Canadians see the role their country's military plays in Afghanistan as an anomaly. However, this assumption is far from the truth. As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has commented, "Canadians are fierce fighters." Fortune Favours the Brave certainly proves this point in a collection of essays that showcases the fighting spirit and courage of Canada's military.Daring actions featured in the book include the intrepid assault on the Fortress of Louisbourg and the cat-an...

Canada has always been known as a good place to live: a tolderant, prosperous, stable country that treats its citizens fairly and protects the weakest in society. Yet during the past seven years, it has started to change into a harder, more mean-spirited place. What is going on?According to political scientist Christian Nadeau, this transformation is being engineered by Stephen Harper and the neo-con ideologues around him. The Conservatives have a clear agenda that they are impleme...

By every principle of war, every shred of military logic, logistics support to Canada's Task Force Orion in Afghanistan should have collapsed in July 2006. There are few countries that offer a greater challenge to logistics than Afghanistan, and yet Canadian soldiers lived through an enormous test on this deadly international stage - a monumental accomplishment. Canadian combat operations were widespread across southern Afghanistan in 2006, and logistics soldiers worked in quiet desperatio...

Captain Robert Semraus military trial made international headlines—a Canadian soldier serving in Afghanistan arrested for allegedly killing a grievously wounded Taliban soldier in the field. The trial and its outcome are a matter of public record. What you are about to read about the tour of duty that inspired this book is not. What you are about to read is an emotionally draining and mind-snapping firsthand account of war on the ground in Afghanistan. It's raw and explosive. Names have be...

Seven soldiers. Seven military specialties. Seven stories.What was it like to serve in the combat mission in Afghanistan? Journalists’ reports from 2006 to 2011 could only give brief glimpses of the reality on the ground for Canadian soldiers. This book reveals the full story of what happened to seven soldiers, ranking from corporal to captain, who were deployed during Operation ATHENA, Phase 2. The operation became known as “the combat mission” as Canadian battle ...

No Lack of Courage is the story of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Operation Medusa, the largely Canadian action in Afghanistan from 1 to 17 September 2006, to dislodge a heavily entrenched Taliban force in the Pashmul district of Afghanistans Kandahar Province. At stake, according to senior Afghan politicians and NATO military commanders, was nothing less than the very existence of the reconstituted state of Afghanistan, as well as the NATO alliance itself. In a bitterly...

"Never talked about it."That's what most people say when they're asked if the veteran in the family ever shared wartime experiences. Describing combat, imprisonment or lost comrades from the World Wars, the Korea War, or even Afghanistan is reserved for Remembrance Day or the Legion lounge. Nobody was ever supposed to see them get emotional, show their vulnerability. Nobody was ever to know the hell of their war.About 25 years ago, Ted Barris began breaking through the sile...