The Economist profiles General Rick Hillier

An unexpected combination of publication and choice of subject, here. Canada barely ever registers on The Economist's radar, and the selection of Canada's former Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) is highly unusual in and of itself:

"We are not the public service of Canada," General Rick Hillier once told journalists. "We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people." Such a robust view of military power was unusual when General Hillier was appointed chief of the defence staff. In the three years he spent in the post before stepping down earlier this month, he almost succeeded in making it mainstream.

Canadians have often seemed more comfortable with an army that puts up tents and dishes out aid than with one that actually shoots people. The reasons for this are partly historical: the Liberal Party, which ruled Canada for most of the second half of the 20th century, drew much of its support from Quebec, where a dislike of military adventures dates back to the days of the British empire. Defence spending was frozen in the 1970s and 1980s, and then cut back in the 1990s.

Bucking this history, Canada announced in 2005 that it would assume NATO responsibility for providing security in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province and sent 2,000 soldiers to do the job. The task of selling the deployment of these troops fell to the plain-speaking general. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were, he explained, "detestable murderers and scumbags" who should be hunted down.

General Hillier was an extremely effective communicator, and in a most unusual way (for a Canadian soldier): he talked like a soldier. Most of his predecessors had absorbed the language of bureaucracy by the time they were appointed as the CDS, and their public statements were (literally) indistinguishable from those of civil servants — woolly, non-commital, bland, boring. Hillier was so obviously not cut from the same cloth as the bureaucrats and politicians that it was a source of constant surprise that he was appointed at all, and then that he was able to not only stay in the job, but that he put on such a bang-up performance.

It's hard not to say that he was the first "rock star" Canadian general. He'll be a very difficult act to follow.