The Blue Helmet

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

The title refers to the helmet worn by United Nations forces during
peacekeeping missions, and Bell’s theme is that, in life, everyone can
choose between wearing the blue helmet of peace or the green one of war.


As he does so well, Bell uses an alienated adolescent male as his
central character. Lee Mercer of Hamilton, Ontario, is filled with a
deep anger spawned by his mother’s cancer-related death and his
father’s emotional absence. After being betrayed during his
crime-based street gang initiation, Lee must choose between facing
criminal charges or going to New Toronto and living with Reena, his
aunt. Choosing the latter, Lee, now the delivery boy for his aunt’s
café as well as a local pharmacy, encounters a number of adults, with
Bruce Cutter being the strangest. Cutter, a recluse, had evidently
designed a financially successful computer game, but, for reasons
initially unknown, he presently lives in a medicated, paranoid state.
Lee, himself an isolate, bonds with Cutter, but is shocked when Cutter
commits suicide, leaving Lee everything, including his house.

Divided into four parts, the book begins with “Lee,” switches to
“Cutter,” then to “Mootwa,” and finally “Peacekeeping.” In
“Mootwa,” via Cutter’s diaries, Lee discovers that Cutter, a
pacifist, had joined the army reserves with the intention of
participating only in Military Operations Other Than War. Offered the
opportunity to join Canada’s 1993 UN Protection Force in the Balkans,
reservist Cutter went but was emotionally shattered by the horrors,
including ethnic cleansing. In “Peacekeeping,” Lee doffs his
psychological combat helmet to make some necessary peace overtures.
Recommended.