Delta, BC, Canada
John Buis
Current Location: Delta, BC, Canada
My first introduction to the United Nations Civilian Police (CIVPOL) deployments was in the summer of 1989 when one hundred members of the RCMP departed from Montréal for peacekeeping duties in Namibia to monitor the election process set to take place in three weeks-time. This unique group of members of the RCMP from across Canada were the first RCMP Officers ever to be deployed on a UN Peacekeeping Mission.
My own first mission came in 1994, when I was selected as one of 45 RCMP members deploying to the Former Yugoslavia to work as unarmed, civilian police monitors for six months. I arrived in Zagreb, Croatia on June 1, 1994, and from there was sent to Ilok, Croatia. My mission went well until November 20, 1994, when we were forced to evacuate to a nearby UN military base. UN peacekeepers throughout the theatre were being threatened and taken hostage. We were able to leave the compound and Sector East a week later. I left the mission area and returned to Canada on December 3, 1994. I returned to Canada with only the uniform I was wearing and a small kit bag with a few pieces of clothing and toiletries. We left in such a hurry there had not been an opportunity to properly present each of us with our UN Peacekeeping medals. Instead, our medals were dropped in our lap as we flew home. The biggest disappointment I had with my first UN Mission was my unexpected evacuation. I did not have an opportunity to say goodbye to the many local people I had gotten to know during my mission. My mission in 1994 ended on a very sour note, and it saddened me to think about the people we left behind.
In 2003, I was selected for deployment to East Timor as a CIVPOL Monitor. On August 30, 2003, after ten days of pre-deployment training sessions in Ottawa, we began our journey to East Timor via Vancouver, Honolulu, Sydney and Darwin. After landing in Darwin, we learned someone had cancelled our plane ticket from Darwin to East Timor, a distance of almost 700 kilometers. The next morning, we chartered a small aircraft and flew to Dili, East Timor to start our mission. The six members of our contingent were from a number of city police services in Canada and the RCMP. We were senior police officers each with 20 or more years of service at the sergeant or staff sergeant rank with a wide variety of experience.
After the first week of indoctrination, testing and lectures we were assigned to the various units within the CIVPOL headquarters building in Dili. I was first assigned to the Professional Standards Unit investigating CIVPOL officers in the mission. The offences we investigated included using the services of a sex trade worker, internet porn, and impaired driving. Punishment was usually repatriation to their home country.
In December 2003, I was transferred to the Deputy Commissioner’s Office and became his Project Officer/Aide. For most of the next six months, I worked with the second-in-command of the CIVPOL Mission in East Timor. We conducted numerous meetings, visits, and inspections of UN police stations throughout the country, and I had a great view of the mission from the vantage point of leaders of the mission.
As the scheduled date for handover of equipment and policing duties to the East Timor Police Service (ETPS) approached, there was an observable lessening of the interaction between CIVPOL and the ETPS. Meetings were missed, combined patrols were cancelled, and ETPS’s lack of presence around the CIVPOL HQ was noticeable. Time passed slowly with less and less to do. It was time for us to leave. On May 23, 2004, we boarded our flight for home. With stops in Bali and Hong Kong, I arrived home one hour earlier than when I departed Hong Kong. I finally got back the day I lost crossing the International Date Line the previous year. I was pleased and happy that I was able to complete a UN mission after the unpleasant, sudden, and emotional evacuation from Ilok Croatia, Sector East in November of 1994.
Did I have a positive impact on the citizens of East Timor during my nine-month mission? It is difficult to measure what impact I had. I do know that, together with all the UN personnel in East Timor, the country had become relatively peaceful, the children and young people were attending school, and the economy was beginning to improve. The people of East Timor appeared to be content, but I am sure they were ready for the UN to leave their country when we did.
Biography
I was born in Winnipeg, MB in 1954, soon after my parents arrived in Canada from The Netherlands. Several years later, we moved to Vancouver, BC. In 1960, my parents bought a home in North Delta, BC, and I have lived in this area ever since. I have been married to my high school sweetheart for over 45 years, and we have three adult children, one of whom is a member of the RCMP.
I joined the RCMP at Surrey Detachment on October 4, 1976 and after 45 years of continuous service, I retired on Wednesday 6 October 2021. I have had an interesting and personally fulfilling career in the RCMP with over 30 years of my service serving in the City of Burnaby. During my career, I have served as a uniformed police officer, plain clothes investigator, Tactical Troop and Emergency Response Team (ERT) member; Policy Writer; Media Relations Officer; Firearms Instructor, VIP Security instructor, United Nations (UN) Police Monitor; Watch Commander; District Commander, and for the last 12 years of my service, as the Executive Non-Commissioned Officer to the Officer in Charge of Burnaby Detachment.
Early in my career, I was seriously injured while on duty, investigating a stolen car. On 22 April 1979, I was in plain clothes in Burnaby, BC. My partner and I stopped a speeding car that was determined to be stolen from the USA. While attempting to arrest one of the seven passengers, I was shot at point-blank range by one of the passengers who was armed with a sawed-off shotgun hidden under his jacket. The two other police officers with me shot and wounded the shooter. The gunman collapsed because of his wounds but was able take my service revolver from my holster and fire it once at one of the police officers, fortunately missing its intended target. The shooter then turned my revolver on me, took me hostage and threatened to kill me. The attending police officers convinced the shooter to give himself up and the hostage taking ended after a four-minute standoff. I was taken to hospital and remained there for 26 days to repair the severe damage to both legs caused by the close-range, shotgun blast. Since the shooting almost 44 years ago, I have returned to fulltime, active duty, but also underwent a total of 15 operations to reconstruct my legs and repair my knees due to the injuries I received from the shooting.
In addition to my regular policing duties, I was the lead RCMP Media Relations Officer for a number of high-profile, national media events including: the RCMP’s “Pulling Together” Journey’s 1997 Canoe Trip; security for the 1997 Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) in Vancouver, and the police response to the November 2014 Kinder Morgan Pipeline protests in Burnaby, BC. I was also a member of the Burnaby Detachment ERT for six years in the 1980s during which I deployed on two emergency deployments to Ottawa, ON, for the Turkish Embassy Crisis in 1985, and to Montréal, QC for the Oka Crisis in 1990.
Notable volunteer accomplishments during my service include co-founding of the Burnaby Task Force on Homelessness in 2004. I was the Director of Security for the Burnaby 2012 BC Seniors Games, and Manager of Security for the 2016 World Junior Tai Kwon Do Championships. Both events were hosted by the City of Burnaby. I am a two-time rider (2006, 2008), on the Canadian Cancer Society’s Cops for Cancer (C4C) “Tour de Coast.” I personally raised more than $35,000 for C4C and I continued to be a coach and mentor for C4C for over 10 years afterwards. In 2019, I received the Canadian Cancer Society BC/Yukon Region, “Achievement in Volunteer Leadership Award.”
I have organized youth basketball in BC, specifically the BC High School Boys’ Basketball Championship Tournament and Basketball BC. I was involved with the high school basketball championships for 43 years and, from 1992 until 2014, I was the Tournament Director. I have been on the Board of Directors at Basketball BC since 1996 and served as the President for nine years in the 2000s. In 2007 I was voted “President of the Year” by Canada Basketball for my leadership in Basketball BC. Also, while at Basketball BC, I was one of the Canadian representatives on the Board of Directors of Fédération Internationale de Basketball (FIBA) of the Americas from 2006 to 2011.
Buis with unknown members of the ETPS on the road to Dili, East Timor (March 2004).
Buis with unknown UN pilot and MI-8 helicopter, September 2003.