The Rest of the Story: According to Boyle

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and coauthor
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influ

The last 15 years have seen the Canadian Forces reach their nadir.
Successive budget cuts led to personnel reductions and a staggering
obsolescence in equipment. As the dreadful events in Somalia in the
mid-1990s suggested, there has also been a breakdown in command,
operational control, and morale. Everett Boyle’s book heaps more coals
on the fire. Boyle was a long-serving Chief Warrant Officer in the air
force, a disciplinarian who expected subordinates to follow the rules
and officers to lead. Instead, he found officers misusing public funds
and preying on their female subordinates and, as a result, soldiers and
airmen doing the same. He protested, arguing up the chain of command for
action, and as seems to happen to whistleblowers all too frequently, he
felt the weight of authority fall on him, not the wrongdoers. The Rest
of the Story is his heartfelt shout for reform of the military.

This book will be of interest to past and present members of the
Canadian Forces, who will read it to see who gets Boyle’s condemnation
(he names names!). It is, however, probably too tightly focused to be of
interest to civilians. But this is an important memoir that makes all
too clear that the Canadian military still has much work to do to regain
the trust of its serving members.