Fact Sheet

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January 2003

CANADIAN PEACEKEEPING SERVICE MEDAL

In 1988, the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to United Nations Peacekeepers in recognition of their collective efforts in the cause of peace for more than fifty years. This inspired the creation of the Canadian Peacekeeping Service Medal (CPSM), the purpose of which is to recognize all Canadians, including serving and former members of the Canadian Forces, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other police services, and Canadian civilians who contributed to peace on specific missions.

THE MEDAL

The medal's obverse features the three Canadian Peacekeeper figures that top the Peacekeeping Monument in Ottawa. One is an unarmed United Nations Military Observer, holding a pair of binoculars. A second soldier, a woman, shoulders a radio, while the third stands guard with a rifle. Above them flies a dove, the international symbol of peace. This side of the medal also bears the inscriptions PEACEKEEPING and SERVICE DE LA PAIX, together with two maple leafs. The medal's reverse shows the cypher of Her Majesty the Queen on a maple leaf surrounded by two sprigs of laurel and the word CANADA.

THE RIBBON

The medal's ribbon consists of four colours: green, red, white and United Nations blue. The green represents volunteerism; the red and white are the colours of Canada's flag; while the white and blue represent the colour of the United Nations' flag, under whose auspices the majority of peacekeeping missions have taken place since 1947. The red and white carry additional meaning. White is associated with purity, and peacekeeping is one of mankind's highest ideals. Red is symbolic of the blood shed by Canada's 113 peacekeepers who have fallen in service to their country while on peacekeeping and observer missions.

ELIGIBILITY

The CPSM will recognize service by Canadians deployed outside Canada for a minimum of 30 days (not necessarily consecutively) either on the strength of a unit of the Canadian Forces deployed on a peacekeeping or observer mission, or in direct support of any such mission.

Almost 125,000 Canadians have served in peacekeeping missions over the past 53 years, a record unsurpassed by any other nation. This tradition "in the service of peace" continues today.

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