U.S. military academy welcomes Dallaire's archives from Rwanda

Like Roméo Dallaire himself, the famous Canadian general’s extensive personal archive from his time as commander of the doomed UN mission during the 1994 Rwanda genocide came close to being destroyed.

- ALLAN THOMPSON

Retired Canadian general Roméo Dallaire, veteran military leader and a human rights advocate, looks at material from his archive now on display in the library at West Point in New York. Dallaire said no Canadian institution had expressed any interest in taking the collection.

The vast collection of documents, letters, recordings and objects from Rwanda — a memory bank that both haunted and entranced Dallaire over the three decades since the genocide — was nearly consumed by fire. Not once, but twice.

But at an emotional event on Friday at the venerable United States Military Academy at West Point, Dallaire formally bequeathed his recovered archive to the institution.

The donation was made on the promise the material would not only be housed and protected, but meticulously restored and proactively made available to researchers and the public — and most important for Dallaire — to a future generation of officers in one of the world’s most important military forces.

“I am humbled that these documents are in this institution,” Dallaire told an invitation-only crowd gathered in an ornate conference room at West Point for a symposium convened to celebrate the launch of the Roméo Dallaire Archive.

In addition to genocide scholars and some of Dallaire’s colleagues from his time in Rwanda, the crowd also included young officer cadets.