2007 Toronto Leadership Dinner - “Celebrating Canada’s Global Military Contribution”

Gord Clarke, President of the Toronto Branch of the RMC Club sent the note below highlighting the 2007 Leadership Dinner.

I hope you join us in Toronto on Grey Cup Weekend!

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Dear friends and colleagues:

The Toronto Branch of the Royal Military Colleges Club of Canada and the reserve units of the Canadian Forces in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) invite you to a celebration of Canada’s global military contribution to peace and security. The fundraising dinner proceeds will benefit the Wounded Warriors Fund and establish a bursary for attendance at the Royal Military College (RMC) of Canada by members of the Reserve Forces.

At the dinner, we will present the Birchall Leadership Award to Major Danny McLeod, a man who has provided inspired leadership in war and peace as an officer and as a great sportsman and coach with links throughout the hockey community and Canadian university sports organizations. The award is named for Air Commodore Leonard Birchall, a Canadian hero of World War II.

The guest speaker for the occasion is General Rick Hillier, C.M.M., M.S.C., C.D., Chief of the Defence Staff. Serving members of the Reserve Forces and local regiments will be in attendance, as will Officer Cadets from RMC. Entertainment will be provided by military bands from the GTA and RMC.

RMC is a national academic and military institution whose sole purpose is to train Canada’s future officers for leadership roles. The dinner will raise awareness of RMC and its role within the business, government and academic communities in the GTA.

We expect to have more than 500 guests and media in attendance; and there is a very high probability that this event will be quickly sold out. To avoid disappointment you should reserve your seat as soon as possible. [Note that I have also created an 'event' on Facebook for those using that service - PK]

For Corporate Sponsorships, please contact Peter Fosbery at (416) 769-8842.

Event details: www.toronto.rmcclub.ca/leadershipdinner.htm

Ex-Cadet Oversight and Dialog

As I post this the Wing is on the Parade Square and the newly badged First Years have joined their Squadrons. Ex-Cadets are in town for their annual visit and reminiscence. The venerable cycle at RMC continues

Since my days at RMC, I’ve spoken to countless Ex-Cadets who express a genuine concern over the dilution of what I’m electing to call the “RMC brand”. I’ll be posting more on that brand later, but for now, let’s focus on dialog and oversight by the Ex-Cadet community and how we can all participate.

The point of the blog is not 'follow me'. I don’t claim to have any great insight into how to run a world-class military college. The truth is I wasn’t a great student. I never got my crossed-bats and Supps weren’t alien to me. I don’t want Ex-Cadets to micromanage Mackenzie since we all understand how paramount principles like OpSec and Chain of Command are. Rather, I'm interested in dialog. We live in an era where the cost of communication has essentially been reduced to zero, and that cost reduction has also opened up two-way transparency. And speed. What I’m experimenting with here is a means to provide the collective experience and wisdom of those who attended a Canadian Military College [we used to have three, and not everyone graduated] to anyone interested in the legacy of Canadian military leadership.

I don’t want things returned to “When I was a rook…” I want it to be better, because today’s officers have to be much more qualified than officers of my era. We were training to fight in a totally different geopolitical sphere. Our battlespace had a big red line on one side of the map and a blue one opposing it. Today, there’s a spectrum of lines that vary from geography to geography. So the training paradigm may need tweaking. Or it may need wholesale renovation. I’ll leave the details of the specifics to the CF to address. I’m interested in the culture of the College.

Many times as a Cadet, whenever some new policy was instituted, I remember thinking, "oh... wait 'till the Ex-Cadets hear about this!", particularly when my peers and I disagreed with it. Now clearly, as OCdts, we didn’t have the most global views. Nor did we necessarily have the experience or exposure to different styles and methods. But as a leadership laboratory [that’s one of the ways I describe RMC to outsiders] we also had the flexibility to try different things and see what worked. So, in hindsight, a little non-sequitur from time to time might make for a good exercise. If you think Mackenzie is squirrelly, wait until you’re a Senior Officer and have to deal with Parliament. Or a civilian boss.

But in my opinion, there has been little oversight by Ex-Cadets on the overall activities at the College. Maybe we, as a community, haven’t asked. But there have been times where we wonder what’s going on. Take last year’s misguided mandate [I’m not bound by QR&Os here] that 4th years live off campus aka “The Cadet Socialization Project.” There was a collective, visceral response from Ex-Cadets. Not since Bob Rae was elected Premier have I heard so many people wonder “What the…?” Mind you, I suppose one could argue that oversight *does* exist, since it has since been rectified. But what’s going to happen if someone decides to get rid of #5s because of budget stress…ooops…too late...the Class of ’59 was astute enough to post the assassination order.

Accountants 1 Esprit de Corps 0

I would encourage the collective College leadership to welcome our oversight. If you really want to see what a lack of external oversight can do to an institution, just Google for ‘scandal’ and ‘West Point USMA”, “Annapolis USNA” or “Colorado Springs USFA” and see what you get. Careful your jaw doesn’t hit the keyboard.

How can Ex-Cadets get involved? You’re reading this blog, so I’m assuming you have some level of interest in the subject. One idea is to connect with your classmates [phone, email, Facebook via the Ex-Cadets group] and talk about your experiences, both what worked and what didn’t. Mentor a Cadet. Subscribe to e-Veritas. Get a lifetime membership to the RMC Club, if you haven’t already. If you're genuinely interested, get involved in the ongoing experiment that is RMC.

Tradition - the ongoing debate

16409 Dave Caplan [RMC '88 and one of the most articulate guys to ever wear scarlets] sent me a great note that was so compelling, that I got his OK to post it.

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With greatest respect to you, I have to disagree with Henry Bullen's exaltation of tradition. What I've found is that all too often, "Tradition is the act of making the same mistake twice, on purpose." Sometimes an act of manifest incompetence or dereliction is protected and perpetuated by the mantra of Tradition. Worse yet, Tradition is occasionally invoked to manipulate masses of sheople toward destinations secretly intended to benefit their shepherds at the flock's expense (viz. many examples of organized religion).

I respectfully submit that anything done in the past is not *by that reason alone* a more appropriate present course of action than any other. Given the constancy of human nature, any given tradition most likely originated as an adequate but sub-optimal solution to some problem in its own day; it was likely institutionalized by vested interests who benefited more from its continuation than others realized; and its inherent deficiencies may today be exacerbated by the peculiarities of its now altered context.

In a world of exponentially accelerating change (now with the added bonus of global secondary and subsequent effects), the unquestioning embrace of a tradition can as easily harm as help. Consider as elementary examples: performing close order drill in scarlet uniforms in the face of rifled breech-loading firearms; persistently bombing civilian residences in the face of an indigenous insurgency; considering periodic election of successive autocratic governments to be the full measure of Democracy; becoming a Catholic altar-boy; etc, etc, etc, etc.

Far better, in my view, to subject any proposed course of action to critical scrutiny and thoughtful creative evolution, regardless of a proffered tradition's purported pedigree.

Maybe I just have a problem with "authority" :) Or perhaps I'm intrinsically bound to my own suppressed albatross of a tradition, namely endless evolution - or worse yet, devotion to the ascendancy of reason over emotion. Sigh.

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Anyone out there have an opinion?

FIRST YEARS HAVE TIME TO BLOG?!?!

WTF? When *I* was a rook.....
http://canadianflyboy.blogspot.com/
Follow Brad Ashcroft's progress through RMC

RMC and Wikipedia

Veracity is not absolute on Wikipedia, but it does give a glimpse into what the community at large is thinking. I was poking around to see if RMC still has a Cadet Wing Commander (CWC). So, I plugged that term into Wikipedia and found something on USAFA. I wondered if the RMC Cadet command structure could be put on Wikipedia. Before anyone in Ottawa or Kingston gets really torqued, I would like to point out that NATO Rank and Insignia is already there…

RMC does have an entry on Wikipedia and someone has gone to great pains to list both notable RMC people and memorials. And it’s not limited to RMC. CMR RRMC and even the Paladins have their own entries. That got me thinking… Shouldn’t the Club and Foundation each have one?

Oh, and by the way, CANFORGEN 136/06 CDS 050/06 011318Z SEP 06 GUIDANCE ON BLOGS AND OTHER INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS - CF OPERATIONS AND ACTIVITIES applies to CF personnel [I’m assuming DND civilians as well] and their online activities. I, too, was quite impressed with the fact that the CF/DND machine was sufficiently "hip" to recognize that the Internet poses a unique capability to communicate with the public, yet still has some OpSec components that need to be addressed. I haven't read the order in detail, but from what I've read from other blogs, it deals with the principle "if you're not sure if you should publish something, check with the Chain of Command." That seems reasonable.

An example of how the RMC Ex-Cadet Network actually works

Years ago, while she was training for the Olympics our own 17324 Sharon Donnely (RMC ’90) contacted me via email inquiring about accommodations for her cycling training in San Luis Obispo, about an 8 hour drive from where I live. Knowing nothing about cycling, I put the request out to my network. It turns out that 11639, Paul Detering (RMC ’78) happens to:

1) Be in my network

2) Be an avid cyclist

3) know people in the cycling community that could help Sharon out.

I put Sharon and Paul in touch, she connected with Paul’s contacts, and was able to progress with her training for the Olympics. She went on to represent Canada in Sydney.

Total cost to the network $0. And that was when the Canadian dollar was at 80 cents!

I use this example not to glorify anything that I did. Rather, it was a relatively complex request from her point of view [after all, Sharon was in Kingston at the time, and didn’t really know anyone in California…except me] , but a relatively simple one from mine.

It really is that simple.

So, what does the RMC Club mean to me?

A lot. The Club gets a lot of my time. I’m a strong believer that networking builds value in the universe. If I’m a good bricklayer, it does no one any good [including myself] unless I can work with home builders and home buyers to determine what they need, what I can provide and figure out any deltas that could be areas for improvement. If I get engaged, and really get to know people in the industry [on *all* sides, not just my customers] I can serve everyone’s needs. My customers, my employers, my partners and mine. Especially mine.

The RMC Club is much the same way. It can help you. But you first need to understand the creation of value http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_network

The Club can do a lot for you. But it starts with you. You need to be part of the Club and contribute, to gain from its value. Are you a member? If you are, *THANK YOU* for supporting the Club and the College. If not, what can I do to help you recognize the value it can bring into your life?