# RIP - BGen Bell



## bossi (18 Oct 2000)

(from the Globe and Mail):

Decorated veteran founded Institute for Strategic Studies
Brigadier-General George Bell also served
as executive vice-president of York University
DONN DOWNEY

Wednesday, October 18, 2000


Brigadier-General George Bell, a decorated veteran of the Canadian Army and a former vice-president of York University, died of cancer of the esophagus on Sunday in the palliative-care unit of Scarborough General Hospital. He was 80.

Brig.-Gen. Bell was also the founder and first president of the internationally respected Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, a body that stimulates discussion of the strategic implications of national and international issues.

George Gray Bell was born in Toronto on May 24, 1920, and enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1940. In 1943, he graduated from the Royal Military College in Kingston and was posted overseas. After D-Day, he crossed the channel to serve in the Netherlands and Germany.

He remained in the army after the war, serving in Canada, the United States and several world trouble spots. He later returned to school, earning his PhD in international relations from McGill University in 1972.

While he was serving in Washington in 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and Major Bell was placed in charge of the guards at Arlington Cemetery. Other international duties took him to the Sinai and Vietnam where, as a brigadier-general, he was the senior Canadian officer.

After his retirement from the army in 1973, Brig.-Gen. Bell joined the Ontario public service as assistant deputy minister to the minister of the treasury, economics and intergovernmental affairs.

In 1976, H. Ian Macdonald, then the president of Toronto‘s York University, appointed him executive vice-president and professor of strategic studies at the university. He was at York when he helped to found the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies.

In 1990, the federal government was studying the effects of the first 12 years of armed forces unification and, as president of the strategic-studies institute, Brig.-Gen. Bell provided input, favouring the publication of an annual review of defence policy. The idea was endorsed by the defence minister at the time, Gilles Lamontagne.

Two years earlier, Brig.-Gen. Bell had said the muscle of the Canadian Armed Forces had been largely eroded by financial restraints imposed by the federal government. The statement was contained in a position paper under discussion by about 85 senior officers in the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps Association.

The paper also called for the establishment of a marine reserve and for special multipurpose ships. The ships, he said, should be able to move men, heavy equipment and helicopters for military purposes, but could also play a role in civilian emergencies.

Brig.-Gen. Bell continued to serve both the army and York after his retirement. He was the honourary president of the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps Association, the unit he had fought in during the war, and he remained a senior research fellow at York until 1996.

In 1989 he was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada. The citation states that "he has served Canada well throughout a long military career, a continuing connection with public life and academe. . . . He has made major contributions to many organizations with the primary aim of preserving the security of Canada . . . "

He leaves his wife, Jean; his daughters, Kathryn and Mary; four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He also leaves a stepdaughter, Barbara. Mr. Bell‘s first wife, Lillian, died in 1987.
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