By Steve Lurie

At the height of the crisis in Rwanda, I remember Prime Minister Jean Chrétien telling the CBC that the UN had a good commander there, a general from Quebec. He was referring to Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire.

Little did we know at the time how difficult it was for General Dallaire and how he tried against all odds to prevent the genocide, receiving little support from either the UN or the major powers. Whether it was racism, a reluctance to see a repeat of the debacle in Somalia or both, the world stood by and left General Dallaire and his colleagues holding the bag.

We did not know at the time that the events unfolding in Rwanda would later bring an end to General Dallaire’s illustrious career in the Canadian military and paradoxically also make him a hero as well as an acclaimed author, advocate and Senator.

Romeo Dallaire was born in Holland, but returned to Canada as a young child and went on to military college, where he began a distinguished career as a soldier as well as a senior public servant in the department of defense. A decorated Lt. General, Roméo Dallaire served for 35 years with the Canadian Armed Forces. He served in various postings and command positions including Quebec City, Gagetown, U.S. Marine Corp Staff College in Virginia, and in Ottawa. He attended the first British Higher Command staff course during the Gulf War. His most famous command appointment, however, was his peacekeeping and United Nations Assistance mission as Commander – United Nations Observer Mission: Uganda and Rwanda.

And then, in 1999, he was found on a park bench near the Ottawa River, his life and career in tatters, because of the profound trauma of his experiences in Rwanda. As we all know, fortunately the story did not end there. With the help of his family and mental health services, General Dallaire pulled his life back together and courageously told the story of the Rwandan genocide to the world in both book and film. In recounting his harrowing experiences bearing witness to humankind’s darkest hour, General Dallaire brought our attention not only to our own evils, but also to the reality of child warfare, to the current crisis in Darfur, and to the necessity of caring about other calamities – even when they occur on the other side of the globe.

It is also General Dallaire’s own recovery from post traumatic stress disorder, his advocacy for improved mental health services in the armed forces and his public telling of his own story about his struggles with mental illness that we celebrate and honour with the Harmony Award.

It takes enormous courage to acknowledge one’s own struggles with mental illness. Senator Michael Kirby, who now heads the Mental Health Commission of Canada, tells the story of a woman who was hospitalized twice, once for breast cancer, and once for mental illness. While recovering from cancer she received flowers, phone calls and visitors. Admitted to hospital with a mental illness, no one showed up or called.

While one in five of us will experience a mental illness this year, most people will not seek or receive treatment. Some of this is due to lack of access to services, some of this is due to lack of knowledge about what services are available, and unfortunately, a great deal of this is due to stigma and shame.

By telling his own story, Roméo Dallaire has brought mental illness out of the closet and into public view. He joins a cast of other public Canadian figures including Margaret Trudeau, Michael Wilson, Michael Kirby and Margaret Kidder. This is hugely important, as experience in other countries as well as our own shows that if public figures can acknowledge their struggles or their relatives’ struggles with mental illness, it becomes easier for us to understand what many of us go through, whether as individuals, or as family and friends of those suffering. Public knowledge, understanding and support are key ingredients to ensuring that mental health services are recognized and funded as a core service of our health care system, and that communities and workplaces foster inclusion of people who live with mental illness.

When honoured a few years ago by the Centre For Addiction and Mental Health, Senator Dallaire noted that guilt is one of the most debilitating aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder, now recognized by several countries as the “Peacekeepers Injury.” Dallaire remarked, “In peacekeeping you are not fighting. An individual sergeant or corporal who witnesses such actions and cannot use force goes through a mental crash. His moral values, his ethical values, his religious beliefs are brought together and they’re all crashing against the unthinkable.”

Given Canada’s continued involvement in the world’s crisis regions, General Dallaire’s observation that there is a new generation of veterans who suffer from injuries to the mind more so than the body requires our acknowledgement and appreciation. An injury of the mind is just as debilitating as an injury of the physical body and must be treated with the same sense of urgency and completeness.

This principle must be reflected in society at large as well as the armed forces. Retired Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire is being honored tonight for bringing both the impact of Rwandan genocide and the impact of mental illness to our attention and making sure that we do something about it. For that, I offer him my deepest thanks and congratulations.

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Steve Lurie is the Executive Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Toronto Branch. He has been working in the field of mental heath for over two decades, and is an honourary co-chair of tonight’s event.