He is forced to participate in community service for school credit. Shattered is told from the perspective of Ian Blackburn, a rich suburban teenager.

Following his experiences as a UN peacekeeper in Rwanda, Dallaire became an advocate for the world's victims of genocide. This included a high-profile incident where he was found unconscious in a public park after heavy drinking. He retired from the military early and publicly struggled These requests were repeatedly denied until after the genocide.ĭallaire’s experiences in Rwanda left him with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He asked for more men and a change to the rules of engagement to try to prevent possible violence.

In 100 days, 6 April to 16 July 1994, an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were brutally killed, mostly hacked to death with machetes.ĭallaire had repeatedly warned the UN about possible violence. Mission took a horrifying turn when Hutu nationalist extremists began murdering ethnic Tutsis. ( See Canadian Peacekeepers in Rwanda.) Initially tasked with ensuring a peaceful end to a Rwandan civil war, the Roméo Dallaire was a brigadier general when he was assigned to lead the United Nations Observer Mission in Uganda and Rwanda (UNOMUR) and the United Nations Assistance Missionįor Rwanda (UNAMIR) in October 1993. (courtesy Dan Harasymchuk, Wikimedia Commons) Roméo Dallaire and the Rwandan Genocide Was not directly based on Dallaire’s experience but was instead inspired by him and his book Shake Hands With the Devil (2003).Įric Walters at the Eden Mills Writers Festival in 2016. ( See Canadian Peacekeepers in Rwanda.) Walters was initially unsure of how to approach the story.

Heroes, an attendee suggested he write about Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of two United Nations’ He was inspired to write Shattered after an encounter at an event for his novel Run, about Terry Fox. Walters was familiar with the struggles of homelessness and mental illness from both his workĪnd personal life. Stand Your Ground alsoĭrew on his experience as an emergency room social worker, which Walters had been since the late 1980s. Disturbed by his students’ lack of interest in reading, he tried to engage them by writing a book that featured students from his class. He wrote his first novel, Stand Your Ground (1993), while teaching Grade 5 at Vista Heights Public School in Mississauga, A Member of the Order of Canada, Walters has published more thanġ00 books since 1993, making him Canada’s most prolific author. (courtesy Department of National Defence/Veterans Affairs Canada) BackgroundĮric Walters was born in Toronto in 1957. Canadian soldier cleaning a boy in Rwanda.

End of days eric walters characters