Nicosia, Cyprus — It was the first time Canadian UN peacekeeper Michelle Angela Hamelin said she had to deal with the raw emotions of a people so exasperated by their country’s dire situation.
On an eight-month business trip ethnically divided Cyprus in 1986, the anger of Greek Cypriot demonstrators demonstrating against the first-ever visit by a Turkish head of government to the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the island was etched in her memory.
“I think that was something that really stuck in my mind because of that anger and the people,” Hamelin told The Associated Press.
She was among 100 other Canadian veterans who traveled to Cyprus as part of commemorations that culminated Monday to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force (UNFICYP), the longest Canadian mission of its kind.
“And this was the first time I was confronted with people who were really, really angry about the situation they were in.”
At the time, it had been twelve years since a Turkish invasion – caused by a coup aimed at unification with Greece – divided the island along ethnic lines and tensions were still high.
UNFICYP had existed since 1964, ten years before the invasion, and was deployed to curb hostilities between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and thus prevent all-out civil war. Canadians were among the first to join the force and eventually more than 28,000 people would serve with UNFICYP. Canada withdrew almost all its peacekeepers from UNFICYP in 1993, but there is still a Canadian presence. About 28 people were killed in the line of duty.
For most of 1986, Hamelin’s job was to patrol the UN-controlled buffer zone that separated troops on either side of the dividing line in the medieval center of the capital Nicosia. a UN barracks.
The hotel’s bullet-riddled sandstone walls were a constant reminder that a flare-up of hostilities could never be ruled out.
‘And knowing that the Turkish side where I stayed was below my window in Ledra Palace. And that you had bullet holes above your bed. There is a possibility that this could happen again,” she recalled.
That didn’t happen. Hamelin said her Canadian counterparts often tested all their diplomatic skills with nervous soldiers to prevent tensions from escalating.
Ronald Reginald Griffis could attest to that distinctively calm Canadian demeanor that earned the country’s peacekeepers a reputation for poise and the ability to defuse tensions quickly.
Griffis was one of the first Canadians to serve in UNFICYP in 1964 and he recalled how he would use that cool Canadian way to settle disputes along the so-called Green Line that divided the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot neighborhoods in old Nicosia.
“One of the qualities was the calmness of the Canadians. They listened, or at least I listened. And then, you know, you talk about it. You try to explain things,” says Griffis, a native of Nova Scotia who now lives in Cottam, Ontario.
“And I thought they appreciated the Canadians being there, and I think they trusted the Canadians to do what they could do.”
More than 100 active-duty Canadian Armed Forces, sent to Cyprus to assist with possible evacuations of Canadians from nearby Lebanon, joined Hamelin, Griffis and other veterans for a Remembrance Day ceremony at Canada’s UN Peacekeeper Monument in the buffer zone near the Ledra Palace hotel.
Canadian High Commissioner to Cyprus Anna-Karine Asselin said the size of the delegation at the commemorative 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,” said Asselin.
A few days earlier, Hamelin and Griffis had taken part in a tour of the buffer zone that brought back many memories.
Both spoke of the changes between Cyprus then and now – from donkey carts on the streets of the capital in 1964 to a thoroughly modern member state of the European Union sixty years later.
But for Hamelin, as much as things have changed in Cyprus, they remain largely 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 much in your face,” she said.