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CHAPTER 6 91 Unification, the Officer Development Board, and Professionalism In December 1966 Defence Minister Paul Hellyer introduced legislation to move from the integration of Defence Headquarters to a complete unification of the Canadian Forces in a single service. There was an immediate storm of protest. Several senior officers, who held that the characteristics of specific trades in each service were different and who objected to the prospective loss of three separate services with their distinctive traditions, organizations, uniforms, and rank structures, either resigned or were forced out.1 Despite their publicly expressed opposition, Bill C-90 passed the House of Commons on 25 April 1967. One effect of Hellyer's unification of the forces onRMC was that it made the name Canadian Services Colleges inappropriate now that there was only one service. The colleges were soon officially renamed whattheyhad often already been called informallybefore, the Canadian Military Colleges. The authorized version in French was"Les colleges militaires du Canada." The names of the individual colleges were not to be translated. Royal Military College and Le College militaire royal (CMR) were unchanged , but Royal Roads became Royal RoadsMilitary College. Discussing these changes, the RMCClub executive noted that the cadet ranks and formations being used in the colleges had been borrowed from the RCAF which now, under unification, had adopted army and American nomenclature. RMC'S cadet ranks therefore seemed anachronistic. Someone suggested nostalgicallythat a return to prewar usage —for example, battalion sergeantmajor -was possible.2 But the ranks adopted in 1948 and used by all three colleges had become hallowed by time. The postwar RMCrank structure remained intact. Unification would eventually affect RMCin more important ways than college names and ranks because the colleges were intended to be the chief source of graduate officers for the newly unified Canadian Forces, but a local event seemed at the time to have more immediate significance. The session 1967—8, when he was on retirement leave, was to be the last year of the director of studies, Colonel Sawyer. Sawyer had been RMC'S main pilot since the decision to reopen first came under discussion after the Second World War. His valuable contacts in headquarters in Ottawa dated from before and during the war. Thereafter, while commandants and staff officers had come and gone, he had been continuously at the helm, steering a steady course towards his goal of academic perfection in a military environment. His personal, almost obsessive, dedication to the wellbeing of the college in which he had served as both cadet and professor had earned him the soubriquet "Mr RMC." Sawyer died in February 1968 and Dr John R. Dacey, professor of chemistry, was appointed to succeed him. This led to a long-expected change in RMC'S structure of command. In addition to being director of studies, Sawyer had simultaneously been vice-commandant of the college, an 92 TO SERVE CANADA arrangement that some military personnel disliked. Queen's Regulations stated that, unless the commandant directed otherwise, command in his absence would be assumed by the next senior military officer present at the college. Sawyer had been appointed vice-commandant shortly after the termination of his war service and had retained military status as a reserve officer, being called out to act in the absence of the commandant. It is quite common in the American military academies for academic heads to be second-in-command under the superintendent , but they are invariablyregular officers.Dacey had served as a scientist in uniform during the war, but when he succeeded Sawyer he had long been a civilian. It would have been inappropriate for him to command A going concernsince 1953, the RMC Pipes and Drums are now an established part of college tradition. Here Drum Major Clark Little leads the band (and the wing) back to the college on Copper Sunday, 1971. the college. The appointment of vice-commandant was dropped. Furthermore, in 1964 a special working group had recommended that the appointees in the Cadet Wing and the administration should hold the same rank.3 Under Commodore W.P. Hayes, a new commandant who arrived in 1967, the successor of the former staff adjutant —now renamed director of cadets - wassecond-incommand . Later the officer-in-charge of administration was renamed director of administration with a lieutenantcolonel 's rank.4 The two military directors and the academic director of studies (renamed the principal and director of studies in 1972) were then co-equal heads of the three wings of the college...

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