Canadian veterans remember how they eased tensions as UN peacekeepers in ethnically split Cyprus

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- It was the first time that Canadian U.N. peacekeeper Michelle Angela Hamelin said she came up against the raw emotion of a people so exasperated with their country’s predicament.

Seared in her memory from her eight-month tour of duty on the ethnically divided Cyprus in 1986 was the fury of Greek Cypriot protesters demonstrating against the first-ever visit by a Turkish head of government to the island’s breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.

“I think that that was something that really stuck to my mind because of that anger and the people,” Hamelin told The Associated Press.

She was one of among 100 other Canadian veterans who travelled to Cyprus as part of commemorations that culminated Monday to mark the 60th anniversary of the U.N. peacekeeping force, known as UNFICYP, the longest such Canadian mission.

“This was the first time I was confronted with people that were really, really upset with their situation that they were in,” she said.

At the time, it had been a dozen years after a Turkish invasion — triggered by a coup aiming at union with Greece — sliced the island along ethnic lines and tensions were still high.

UNFICYP had been in place since 1964, a decade prior to the invasion, deployed to tamp down hostilities between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots to prevent an all-out civil war.

Canadians were among the first to join the force and more than 28,000 would eventually serve with UNFICYP. Canada withdrew almost all its peacekeepers from UNFICYP in 1993, but a Canadian presence still remains.

Some 28 Canadians lost their lives in the line of duty on Cyprus.

Through most of 1986, it was Hamelin’s job was to patrol the U.N.-controlled buffer zone that separated troops on either side of the divide in the medieval center of the capital, Nicosia, staying in the once luxurious Ledra Palace hotel that had been converted into a U.N. barracks.

The hotel’s bullet-pockmarked sandstone walls were a constant reminder that a flare-up in hostilities could never be ruled out.

"The Turkish side where I stayed was right there underneath my window at Ledra Palace ... you got bullet holes above your bed. There’s a possibility this could happen again,” she recalled.

It didn’t. Hamelin said her Canadian colleagues would often muster all their diplomatic skills with jittery soldiers to keep tensions from escalating.

Ronald Reginald Griffis could attest to that trademark, calm Canadian demeanor that earned the country’s peacekeepers a reputation for even-handedness and ability to quickly defuse tensions.

Griffis was one of the first Canadians to serve in UNFICYP back in 1964, and he recalled how he would employ that cool Canadian way to settle disputes along the so-called Green Line that separated Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot neighborhoods inside old Nicosia.

“One of the qualities was the quietness of the Canadians. They listened, or at least I listened. And then, you know, you talk it over. You try to explain things,” said Griffis, a native of Nova Scotia who now lives in Cottam, Ontario.

“I thought that they appreciated Canadians being there, and I think they trusted the Canadians doing what they can do,” he said.

More than 100 active-duty Canadian Armed forces personnel, dispatched to Cyprus to assist in possible evacuations of Canadians from nearby Lebanon, joined Hamelin, Griffis and other veterans for a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Canadian U.N. Peacekeeper Memorial inside the buffer zone near the Ledra Palace hotel.

Canada’s High Commissioner to Cyprus Anna-Karine Asselin said the size of the delegation at the commemoration event illustrated the “deep significance of the mission” for Canadian veterans.

“We pay tribute to their invaluable contribution to peace. We recognize the challenges they faced along the way,” Asselin said.

A few days earlier, Hamelin and Griffis had joined a tour of the buffer zone that brought many recollections.

Both spoke of the changes between Cyprus then and now — from donkey carts in Nicosia's streets in 1964 to a thoroughly modern European Union member state 60 years later.

But for Hamelin, no matter how much things have changed in Cyprus, they remain much the same.

“I see how built up this is now in Nicosia. But it’s still the same. We still have that division and it’s very, very ... in your face,” she said.