More than 50 years after Canada played an instrumental role in its inception, peacekeeping has once again returned to the center of the national foreign policy debate. Having participated in every peacekeeping operation set up during the Cold War and lived through the fundamental changes the activity has undergone in the 1990s, Ottawa is currently struggling to define a viable approach to peacekeeping for the 21st century. As a timely contribution to this effort, the study reveals the overt and subtle ways in which Canada's commitment to peacekeeping has contributed to the promotion of vital national interests in the past and might continue to do so