{"id":16722,"date":"2012-09-01T00:01:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T05:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16722"},"modified":"2012-08-31T12:51:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T17:51:23","slug":"celebrities-as-honorary-colonels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/09\/01\/celebrities-as-honorary-colonels\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrities as honorary colonels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had not heard about this little innovation in the long-established practice of <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2012\/08\/31\/sass-jordan-honorary-colonel-canadian-forces\/\" target=\"_blank\">appointing honorary colonels<\/a>, lieutenant colonels, and captains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Typically, honorary lieutenant colonels or colonels for the Army, RCAF honorary colonels, and honorary captains for the Navy, were ceremonial titles primarily handed out to retired Canadian military officers to foster \u201cesprit de corps\u201d within the unit, according to Royal Canadian Navy Captain Michel Charron, director of senior appointments for the Forces. But over the past decade, the selection criteria for the honorary appointments\u2019 \u201cgene pool\u201d was expanded to include non-retired military folks from the worlds of academia, business, politics (excluding Members of Parliament), and arts and entertainment. \u201cOne of our objectives is to increase the connection to the communities in which the units are located,\u201d explained Capt. Charron. \u201cBy their presence and name, these distinguished Canadians provide a public profile \u2014 and a public face \u2014 for the unit.\u201d An honorary officer nomination begins at the unit or squadron level, and must be approved by regional command and national headquarters. The recommendation is sent to the Defence Minister, who officially makes the appointment. \u201cThe whole idea we have is that if we can make people a little more aware of what the Air Force is involved in, maybe they\u2019ll take more interest overall in our operations,\u201d said retired Col. Dave Peart, who spent 39 years with the RCAF and now manages the program.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Appointed for a renewable three-year term, honorary officers don\u2019t get paid, but their expenses \u2014 such as travel to a military base \u2014 are covered by the Forces. They\u2019re expected to help their unit organize and participate in parades, change-of-command ceremonies, mess dinners and charitable activities, such as through the CF\u2019s Military Family Resource Centres\u2019 programs. In June, marketing entrepreneur Arlene Dickinson, of CBC Television\u2019s <em>Dragons\u2019 Den<\/em> fame, became an honorary captain for the Royal Canadian Navy. A month earlier, Man in Motion Rick Hansen was made an honorary colonel of the Forces\u2019 Joint Personnel Support Unit, which provides services to serving and retired ill and injured military personnel. Comedian Rick Mercer, rock star Tom Cochrane, country music singer George Canyon, Conservative Senator Pamela Wallin, and CBC <em>Hockey Night in Canada<\/em> sportscaster Ron MacLean have also served as honorary colonels with the RCAF.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had not heard about this little innovation in the long-established practice of appointing honorary colonels, lieutenant colonels, and captains: Typically, honorary lieutenant colonels or colonels for the Army, RCAF honorary colonels, and honorary captains for the Navy, were ceremonial titles primarily handed out to retired Canadian military officers to foster \u201cesprit de corps\u201d within [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-military"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4lI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16723,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16722\/revisions\/16723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}