He may be chatty in private but, as far as public utterances go, John de Chastelain is a man of few words. He has a potentially pivotal role in the peace process and expectations are high that he will deliver a judgment on the decommissioning issue to the British and Irish governments in the near future. His report is likely to have fateful consequences.
But in the meantime he has said nothing. It's in character: when he was one of a number of senior officers heavily criticised by an inquiry into an incident in 1993 involving Canadian paratroopers on a relief mission to Somalia who tortured and killed a local youth, he made only limited comment. He was a key player with co-chairmen George Mitchell and Harri Holkeri in co-ordinating the talks that led to the Belfast Agreement but at news conferences he yielded centre-stage to the Senator, only coming in now and then, usually to answer technical questions about the destruction of paramilitary weapons.
His public reticence extends to the printed page. The entry for Gen Alfred John Gardyne Drummond de Chastelain (ret) in Who's Who in Canada includes a long list of his military assignments and postings but relatively few publications. Two articles on the military implications of the ending of the Cold War are The Art of Prudent Wing-Walking: Coming to Grips with Detente, and Wing-walking revisited: Canadian Defence Policy after the Cold War.
Wing-walking, that is, walking on the wings of aeroplanes, is of course a very high-risk activity - more popular in the old biplane days than now - and the general's theme was don't loosen the grip with your right hand until you have something firm to hold on to with your left.
It's a good description of his approach to decommissioning, which has been characterised by considerable caution. He has been holding meetings, setting up procedures, asking questions and collecting information, and has stuck fast to that area of activity. While many would like him to make a pronouncement and get everybody off the hook, he has so far kept his own counsel.
The problem he faces is that, despite many meetings with republican and loyalist leaders, such as Martin McGuinness and Billy Hutchinson, the only "product" received so far has come from the Loyalist Volunteer Force. That was a modest gesture, greeted with scorn and cynicism by mainstream republicans and loyalists.
While there have been hints of further decommissioning by the LVF, there are no indications that the IRA, UVF or UDA intend handing over or otherwise disposing of any weapons. Indeed recent reports indicate the UVF is rearming.
The lack of concrete up-front evidence of decommissioning has not eased the pressure for the general to "say something" which would facilitate the formation of the new Northern Executive. The open desire of many nationalists and secret wish of some pragmatic unionists is that the general would say, in effect, that "these groups may not have handed in weapons but they definitely will do so by such-and-such a date and, besides, I am certain they will never use them again anyway."
That would not be prudent wing-walking and those who know the general well say it would be naive to expect him to make any such statement without firm evidence to back it up. He has made it clear in private to anyone who will listen that he will not be a stooge or patsy for anybody and that anything he says will be firmly based on the facts available at the time.
As a military man he is not given to displays of emotion but friends have found him somewhat glum about the absence of product from the paramilitaries. This week has seen a procession of political parties to his door in Belfast: one SDLP insider said privately the general might need to be warmed up. The UUP leader and First Minister-designate, David Trimble, has also been invoking the general's name of late. He has become the Man in the Middle.
His orthodox military background could not be more different from that of the North's paramilitaries but friends say he has an acute understanding of the dynamics of guerrilla organisations like the IRA: secretive, tightly-controlled and capable of a lethal and deadly efficiency. He must also have a strong suspicion at this stage that the mainstream paramilitaries intend giving him nothing in the immediate future - if ever.
This means that, if and when he speaks, the general will in all likelihood be obliged to say that despite his best efforts and the procedures that have been put in place, no IRA, UVF or UDA guns have been decommissioned. He may be able to say he believes the parties linked to paramilitaries are genuinely using their influence to bring decommissioning about, as required under the Belfast Agreement. Friends say Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have impressed him as persons who, whatever their past history and outlook, genuinely seek to bring the republican movement on to an exclusively democratic and peaceful path and are taking big personal risks to do so.
De Chastelain will be 62 in July but looks younger. His passion for walking, the flat earth rather than wing variety, keeps him fit. When he first appeared in the peace process as co-author of the Mitchell report on decommissioning and later as a co-chairman of the talks, the Ulster Unionists saw the Scots Presbyterian, who emigrated to Canada but returned to attend a British military college, as definitely "One of Us".
But his American mother is a Walsh whose grandfather probably came from Kilkenny and his wife, Mary Ann Laverty, also has Southern Irish roots. His father, a Scot of Huguenot stock, was a petroleum engineer who worked in Romania before the second World War. Alfred John was born in Bucharest.
De Chastelain snr used to race cars with the young Prince Michael and this background must have been one of the reasons Churchill had him parachuted into that country in 1943 to arrange the surrender of the Romanian forces which had sided with Germany. Both parents were wartime intelligence operatives. This background fuelled republican suspicion of the general initially but this eased when they met him.
He joined the Canadian Army and rose quickly in the ranks, eventually becoming the country's Chief of Defence Staff. As one of the Allied commanders in the Gulf War he acquired a close knowledge of the intersection between politics and military matters which doubtless stands him in good stead even in the more localised conflict in the North.
More recently, the general was named a Companion of Honour in Britain's New Year Honours List.
Those close to him say he does not know why Downing Street asked him to play a role in the peace process: it must have been because the situation required someone with military expertise who came from a Commonwealth country.
That long experience of the interplay between politics and military matters may also have been a factor. He is a very political officer, his quiet-spoken demeanour a long way from the parade-ground. It was a tribute to his political nous when he was appointed Canada's ambassador to Washington - in that capacity he met George Mitchell, then a member of the Senate, when they engaged in political debate on CNN.
What makes de Chastelain, having strode the world stage in the Gulf War and later as Washington envoy, want to become embroiled in the conflict in Northern Ireland? Friends say he is concerned that 30 years of strife have been gnawing away at the vitals of Europe, not to mention the United Kingdom, and would like to do what he can to help establish the norms of civilised society.
Well intentioned, clever and politically sophisticated he may be, but he still faces one major problem: before you can turn swords into ploughshares you first have to get your sword.
