“This is who we are. This is what we do.”
This podcast presents candid conversations with Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) members and veterans.
Although the RCAF Defence Team is our primary audience, the topics covered on this podcast should be relevant to anyone who has an interest in Canadian military affairs.
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Announcer:
RCAF Jump Seat, you are cleared for take-off.
RCAF Jump Seat, the official podcast of the Royal Canadian Air Force. This week in the Jump Seat, Brigadier General Denis O'Reilly, Chief of Staff to the Chief of Defense Staff. Now your hosts, Major David Lee and Major Dave Meister.
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Maj David Lee:
Good day. Welcome to the RCAF Jump Seat. I’m Major David Lee, along with my co-host, Major Dave Meister. Maybe the first question that you might ask is, if you're one of our listeners, is what are we doing and why should I keep listening to this podcast? What we're trying to bring is a bit more of a conversational tone into describing some of the people really, and the leaders and some of the personnel within the Royal Canadian Air Force and bringing some of their stories to life.
On that note, I'll introduce my co-host, Dave Meister. Dave, over to you. I mean, maybe the question, of course, why are you doing this yourself? You have quite the interesting background in this material already.
Maj Dave Meister:
Yeah. You know, I always started off, “why me?” Well, because I've got the face for radio. This was the perfect venue for me. I'm going to go to my grave, not wondering: “What if?” So I've done a lot of different things; I've done a lot of stage work, and I've also done a bit of radio in my past too.
So yeah, I'm excited to be here. I'm the squirrel guy. Things pop into my mind, and I just want to go down these rabbit holes. We were talking just before the show about your career. You were telling me a story about how your career almost went off the rails. You had a funny story.
Maj David Lee:
Yeah. You know, I'm surprised to be able to introduce myself today as “Major”, because when I was a young Second-Lieutenant, I saw my career disappearing in an instant when I was tasked to supervise the bouncy castle at the kids’ holiday party and there was a strict limit, they said: “no more than ten people in”. And I was able to maintain that limit. But what I didn't count on was two of the older children. They started policing the slide at the time, they, basically there was a lower area where kids had bounce around and then there was kind of a ramp up, a small platform and a slide down to exit the bouncy castle.
Maj Dave Meister:
So, policing it in a good way, or a bad way?
Maj David Lee:
It depends on your perspective…
Maj Dave Meister:
All right. I’ll let you tell the story.
Maj David Lee:
The two of them gone to the top and of course, there was only ten people inside. But what they started doing - and this is all just based on, you know, a column of air from some low power fan - The two of them were sitting on this platform and what they were doing was stopping the other children as they went up the ramp and not letting them go down the slide, because, sometimes kids are just, not nice to each other…I’ll leave it at that. And, you know, this is a family show. And so, what ended up happening was, there was enough of a concentration of kids, well, that it started collapsing into the middle of the entire bouncy castle. All of a sudden, ten tiny screams coming out of this thing. Moms and dads come from all corners of the gym over at Building 90. They grab the rope, they pull it down. I again, I just saw my career flashing before my eyes. I swear three or four kids came rolling at the end of the, of the slide and one looked right at me and said, “I thought I was going to die”. Meanwhile, there was a dad and he had his two sons and they were waiting to go in, and they just looked at me and said, “Does that mean we can go in now?” Because as the kids came tumbling out, you know, the bouncy castle restored its shape and my career was saved.
(Laughter)
Maj Dave Meister:
Okay. So, this this goes to the point right, there are stories out there. We’ve got to tell these stories. We’ve got to move on to our guest, though, now. He's been waiting for us.
Maj David Lee:
So that's true. And here for our first guest of the inaugural episode of the RCAF Jump Seat is Brigadier General Denis O'Reilly. Sir, thank you for joining us today.
BGen Denis O'Reilly:
Thanks for having me. I'm excited too.
Maj David Lee:
Part of the reason that we thought about speaking with you and getting to know you a bit better, and for the for the listeners of this podcast is that, your own story is quite interesting within your own career in the Air Force. And so, as Dave and I got together and thought about maybe some of the things we might want to talk about with you, one of the first things that came to mind is family.
One of the first things I remember when I met you, sir, when you were a Lieutenant-Colonel at the time, is that if I'm not incorrect, you have a family of seven children.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
That's right. Seven kids.
Maj David Lee:
What are some of the maybe unique challenges and stressors that come with having a family of that size? People talk about family in the RCAF or in the CAF as a whole, but I don't think they often expect a family maybe beyond two or three children.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Yeah. So, you know, life in the Forces can be difficult enough with the challenges that any family faces, whether you have kids or not, just moving frequently, spousal employment, you know, selling and buying homes, all that other stuff. But we certainly didn't make life easier on ourselves by having seven kids, which is self-inflicted, to be fair, based on religious beliefs we had when we were far younger.
So, we love the big family. Honestly, there's been some real benefits of having seven kids because they've been their own cohort. So, there's unintended positive benefits of that, that we didn't realize until later that our kids’ friends were, I guess, less important to them, or less, they needed them less during moves.
Maj David Lee:
Sure.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
But then in any move, and I know families out there with kids know, you know, the crying phase, when you move somewhere, they miss their friends and you put them to bed.
They're crying and that tears your heart out. So, if you have seven kids, odds are every move somebody's going to be doing that. But I'm certainly very grateful for what it's done for our kids. They're incredibly resilient and self-confident and comfortable in their own skin. And I think our job as parents is not to protect our kids from adversity, but to prepare them for it.
And I think the military provides a lot of those positive aspects to raising kids if you harness it. But I would say, though, I say we don't avoid adversity. We prepare them for it. But there are some things that are insurmountable. And so, we do see families where there are, you know, education issues, a health issues, mental illness, mental health challenges with kids. And I'm also seeing family members who make the call to stay, you know, that they care about their family. So, I've been lucky enough that that's never really been a showstopper for me. Also, because we made a decision that my wife would stay at home with the kids for 15 years. And that's a decision we made. But there are other couples now that they both have careers they want to pursue. And so that makes it more challenging. So, I wouldn't say our life has been a model to follow or that were some kind of model of success because it's so unique and different. It's not for the faint of heart, I would recommend, but certainly there's a lot of growth there. You know, when they talk about, “if it builds character…”, well, then my kids have a lot of character. But so do a lot of other military kids out there to be fair, so…
Maj Dave Meister:
And what's the age difference between them?
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Oldest is 27 and the youngest are 17. They're just graduating high school, the twins.
Maj Dave Meister:
And how many how many are still at home?
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Well, because of COVID, actually, a couple came home that were living on their own before. One because he graduated in Ottawa and then couldn't find a job right away and ran out of money and was going to go do a Master's. And so, he moved home. And another because he was studying in Winnipeg, and when we moved back, he moved home again. We're going from having five at home to one when we moved to Ottawa this summer. So, all three are staying here. One is going to Saskatoon, one’s in Europe going to school. And our oldest is in Ottawa as a nurse, so not even sure if that math adds up. But yeah, one moving in with us in Ottawa to go to school.
Maj David Lee:
So having one at home probably that'll be the lowest number yet, I'd imagine.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
For sure. I'm not even sure what table conversation is going to look like.
(Laughter)
I should probably Google what to talk about on a second date because that's probably where Doris and I are going to be at that point in our life.
Maj Dave Meister:
Okay, so and I've had the privilege of working with you. I know how important the family is to you. I have trouble just, you know, balancing work with, trying to make it to enough kids’ activities…I can't make it to all the kids’ activities. How do you do that with seven, I guess, like you say, they became the cohort for it.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Yeah, we didn't do it. In fact, at one point we realized we couldn't afford it, both the time and the money. And at one point our kids were… we had three boys in hockey, and I was a Captain. Maybe I was a Major at the time, but Doris was still at home working hard, obviously, trying to coordinate our life, Far busier than I was, I would suggest.
But yeah, we realized we couldn't. It wasn't sustainable. Like we had a third kid join hockey and we were like, “we actually cannot afford this financially”. But time-wise, because I travel so much and we're in places where there's no family support, we couldn't possibly get everywhere to all the events with me not knowing when I was going to be there and when I wasn't.
So, we actually had to tell our kids at one point, and it still saddens me here…and remember this is all self-inflicted, right? But telling them that, you know, “we can't afford to put you in sports outside of school anymore. So if you want to play sports, you got to do it in school.” And they were all fantastic about it.
Like, they absolutely understood it. But to this day, I still struggle with, you know, the choices we had to make because of the decisions we made about the number of kids versus what we could offer them. So, yeah, like anything, it's a balancing act, right? You take the good with the bad.
Maj David Lee:
On that note, I mean, having seen your military career and the choices that that you and your spouse have had to make, if you don't mind me asking, are any of your seven kids, have any of them considered following your footsteps, having a military career, joining cadets, anything like that?
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
The cadets were not a big thing, not for me or for my kids. We tried a couple of them. They just weren't interested. And then my son is in the Reserves now for three years; Fort Garry Horse here in Winnipeg. Very proud of him. He just finished his PLQ and so he was on full time summer employment. He loves it. He loves it, but he doesn't want to join the workforce. I don't know why. I think because he's got a girlfriend now, and I think that stability…he knows that he doesn't want to jeopardize the relationship. And then we've got a daughter, the one that just graduated Grade 12. She really wants to be a SAR (Search and Rescue) Tech. For the last 18 months, two years, she's been working out hard…like this young woman can do chin ups, sorry, pull ups with a £20 weight vest. Like I think she does eight now with a £20 weight vest. And so, she's going to go to Saskatoon training to be an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). Yeah. And then she wants to join the Reserves as a Med Aide and try to get into the reserves and the field hospital in Saskatoon and then do her time, minimum time as a Reservist and apply to be a SAR Tech.
So she is super motivated to do that. But that's it. Out of the seven kids, nobody else is really interested.
Maj David Lee:
Well, it's interesting too, that the entry path that your daughter is contemplating of arming herself with certain skills first before then trying to make that transition, I think speaks to some of the non-traditional kind of entry paths that people have into the military. I think, Dave, if I can just pass it to you for a second, certainly in preparing for this session…finding out a bit about your own background, and some of what brought you here. We could talk, I think, you and I for an hour…
Maj Dave Meister:
This is my fourth time in uniform. Yeah, absolutely. I did want to…squirrel in the room for me, sorry, but you're talking about your son being out at For Garry Horse. Now, Army, Air Force…does he…and Dad's a General. Does he encourage you to show up in uniform, or discourage you from showing up in uniform? I don’t want to…
BGen Denis O'Reilly
Oh, man… You know what, I regret now the moment you said that, because he really doesn't want people to know, and I should have… you know…there’s probably no Army people that are going to listen to this podcast.
(Laughter)
But he really wants to make…because he's a great guy. He wants to make his own way. And he really avoided sharing it as much as he could. Eventually it got out. You know, the CANFORGEN and came out for appointments, so, they're like, in fact, he was out on his finishing an exercise and they said, “Hey, where's your dad going this summer?”
And he goes, “I don't know. My dad doesn't tell me anything.”
He says, “Well, I know, I've got the CANFORGEN right here. It says your dad's going to do this job!”
And so, he's kind of a little embarrassed by it. And but we throw stuff around, like he calls me “Chair Force” and, you know, they have their own funny terms for us in the Air Force. And I throw some stuff back at them.
Maj David Lee:
It’s funny when you say, you know, you wonder how many Army listeners we're going to have. I think we're just hoping for listeners, period at this point.
BGen Denis O'Reilly
Yeah, absolutely!
(Laughter)
Maj David Lee:
Not to slag our own effort too much, but this is this is the first time out. First person through the gate always gets bloody.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Yeah
Maj David Lee:
Thanks for answering that. I mean, it's ultimately a very personal one. Some of the people that I've served with, they have a different answer, to be honest, about whether or not they'd want their sons or daughters serving in the military. Some are hard over for, “Yes”, and they say, “the opportunities it's offered to me are great, and I would I want my children to consider that”. Other people say, “I would never want my kids to serve in uniform. That's part of the reason that I serve.” So, it's an intensely personal question.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
I think that it’s not for everyone. And when I talk about military service at grads especially, there's lots of families at grads, and I have this sine wave that I put up there and I call it “The Highs and Lows of Military Service”. And the analogy I use, I think, anyway, is that the highs are so much higher than not being in the military. Like, the opportunities are tremendous to see the world, to serve your country, to save lives. You know… that service before self. Unlimited liability and the level of training and development you get through a career is incredible. I don't recognize myself from when I joined 30 years ago. I owe that to the opportunities and being pushed outside of my comfort zone.
But the lows are obviously there too, and you've got to take the whole package, right? So, I never say that military service is better or worse than non-military service. Just different. Right? You have to expect the highs are going to be really high and the lows are much lower, but no regrets.
Maj Dave Meister:
And I've seen over the course…and you with seven kids, my brother has five kids. When he was in the military, he was in over 20 years. I know that when he took paternity leave, you know, after five kids, they kind of start looking down their noses at them, a little bit like, “Okay, come on now. It's your choice to have the family”. Did you find that? Did anybody…and I think maybe wife your wife at home you didn’t take advantage of that. I don't know. But did you find that people look at you differently when you have seven kids? And then maybe, you know what, “maybe we shouldn't send you on this deployment. We got this single guy over here, this single woman over there. Maybe she should go”. Do you find people were making decisions for you because of your family situation?
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
I think it happens subconsciously people do it, but not overtly. I never noticed that. I felt the need sometimes to say, “Hey, you know, just because I have seven kids don't think you need to protect me. My wife is tremendously capable of handling the home front and she can fix anything, right? She…the wall came off when I was on Air Task Force Iraq Roto Zero…and the wall came apart because of water getting behind it, and she tore the wall out, put cement board up, and retiled the whole shower on her own. She's tremendously capable. It puts me to shame, the level of energy and talent that she has towards those things. So, yeah, sometimes people want to make that for you, but I've been pretty lucky. But there's all kinds of biases out there, right? Like you just see a white male when you look at me, but then seven kids makes me… that intersectionality…seven kids makes me different. When I was younger in my career, I was very religious. And so, there are certain things you experience…our life very differently. You know, if there was a culture of partying and drinking more than I wasn't necessarily included in that, but through my own choice, but you can certainly experience exclusion for all different reasons. Right. And we're getting much better at just seeing pass that and saying, you know, just because they're single, or they have kids, or their gender, sexuality, race, whatever it is, or family situation, we can't draw any conclusions from any of that any more than somebody who's left-handed. Do you know what I mean? Or the color of your hair, it doesn't mean anything. You can't…you shouldn't make decisions about people based on anything that you can see.
Maj David Lee:
Yeah, well, I appreciate you saying, Sir, that you've never sought, you know, said to people, “hey, you don't have to totally protect me with seven kids”. I've heard a few times in my own career where I've been told as a bachelor, as a single person without kids, well, “You don't have a family. You're single.”
And my response, you know, over time developed into, “Well, I didn't just spawn from thin air. I mean, I do have my parents, my siblings, you know, the people…and now you're hearing more. I think, people talk about the family and friends. And for me, my closest friends are like family. So, an opportunity to still see them and not take every evening shift or not take every weekend shift or stay over the holidays is welcome. So, on behalf of the single members out there. Thanks for being willing to take a few hits.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Yeah. Even RHU Policy, you know, the development of RHU Policy to enable single people to stay wasn't always like that. Right? We in a way, we discriminated against them, and it seems like it's a math argument. Well, you have more kids, you have more of a need for it. But the reality is how you define your family shouldn't exclude you from having access to, you know, housing, for example.
Maj David Lee:
Right
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Because your financial situation could be very different from somebody else's. So, you know, you can't draw any conclusions. So, I'm glad to see a lot of our policy's changing to remove all of those biases. But we have we have more work to do for sure.
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Announcer:
RCAF Jump Seat
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Maj David Lee:
Welcome back to the RCAF Jump Seat, General O'Reilly, this is where we're going to shift from the Jump Seat to the hot seat and throw a few rapid-fire questions at you.
If you hadn't pursued this path and if you didn't join the military, what other occupation is there out there that you really would have been interested in trying on?
BGen Denis O'Reilly
Medicine.
Maj David Lee:
Okay.
Maj Dave Meister:
Medicine? All right.
BGen Denis O'Reilly
You want to know why?
Maj David Lee:
Sure. So I wanted to be a doctor. You know, we.
Maj Dave Meister:
No, we just want the answer, that’s it!
(Laughter)
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
I wasn't sure it was one of those like 60 seconds wasn't, you know, and you have to go rapidly. I actually went to university in pre-med my first year, and I just…I bombed terribly, like, very low self-discipline, lazy study habits. My first year, I think I finished with a C average. And so, I was taking philosophy my first year and I had a prof say: “You're really good at this, Denis”.
“Yeah, I'm good at making stuff up. Right?”
Maj David Lee:
I appreciate that because that, what you're describing is probably not the person that you want to see when you need a doctor.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Probably not…
Maj David Lee:
“I kind of half read this, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing.”
(Laughter)
BGen Denis O'Reilly
What would you call someone who finishes last in medical school?
Maj David Lee:
A doctor, right?
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Yeah, that would have been me, you know? Do you want me doing surgery?
(Laughter)
Maj David Lee:
Retirement is probably on the horizon somewhere in the next five, ten, 15 years for you.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Sure.
Maj David Lee:
What's one place that you would like to travel to that you've never had the chance to yet?
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
I don't know that I'm a big traveler necessarily. I've done enough traveling, so I don't have any aspirations to travel. But I want to get more involved in the community. So, I guess if you want to talk about how I want to spend my time…I'd like to get more involved in the community. Like, my wife and I talk about how we've become a little bit lonely, like military life is lonely.
And then also when you move up in the ranks, they say it's lonely at the top, whether it's self-imposed or not. Like you… you find lots of acquaintances and coworkers and you foster lots of strong professional bonds with people. But also, we notice, and maybe this is just us, but a life in the military…when you moved around all these years, our kids have never been to a wedding or a funeral. Like, you know, we've always been away from everything. So just getting established in a community where you have friends, where you actually get invited to their kids wedding. Right? And then getting involved in a charity and maybe serving on a board of directors for like, feeding the homeless or just getting really embedded in a community at a level that you feel like you belong.
And that's just what I miss me is becoming part of community again. And I've been longing for that during my career. It's not that, you know, the career hasn't been without other things that are absolutely amazing, but that's what I'm missing right now, and that's what I look forward to in retirement.
Maj David Lee:
Maybe the next question for you. So, you're leaving Winnipeg after some years here. What's one thing that you'll miss about the city.
BGen Denis O'Reilly
The people. And then the restaurants. I'm a foodie. My wife and I love checking out the different restaurants.
Maj Dave Meister:
And this will be probably the furthest away from home you'll be in quite a while. Because you're from Moosejaw originally.
BGen Denis O'Reilly
Yeah, from Moosejaw originally. So I love big cities. I'm an urban guy. I like being close to shopping, and restaurants, and festivals, and live music, and there's a lot going on in Winnipeg.
Maj Dave Meister:
What's your biggest pet peeve?
BGen Denis O'Reilly
People who are late.
Maj Dave Meister:
We were all here on time.
Maj David Lee:
Yeah, we let the record show we were here.
BGen Denis O'Reilly
I will tell you, it almost causes anxiety. I don't know if it's the military in me or whether I was always like that. But I can't stand being late. And it bothers me when people are late without a good reason.
Maj David Lee:
Duly noted.
(Laughter)
Well, thanks to you, General O'Reilly, for taking the time to join us today on RCAF Jump Seat.
BGen Denis O’Reilly:
Thanks for having me. This was cool.
Maj David Lee:
Also, thanks to the production staff at RCAF Barker College, and thanks to you, the listener, for taking the time to tune in.
Maj Dave Meister:
We want to hear from you at RCAF. Jump seat. Please let us know Who do you want to talk to? You got a story out there. We want to know about it. Send us an email at RCAF. Jump seat at Force's. Okay. We do want to hear from you. Please let us know.
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Thanks for listening. I'm Dave Meister.
Maj David Lee:
And I'm Dave Lee. And we'll see you next time…
Maj David Lee / Maj Dave Meister:
In the Jump Seat.
(Laughter)
Announcer:
RCAF Jump Seat Podcast, copyright the King in right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of National Defense, 2023.
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