Captain Rainville was a Canadian soldier who has courted controversy on several occasions for his orders leading to public outcry. He was ultimately acquitted of criminal charges for his actions, but released from military service.

Training exercises

On May 15, 1992, Rainville was the officer in charge of an Escape and Evasion training exercise during which Canada's first female infantry officer, Sandra Perron, along with all the male candidates of the Infantry Basic Officer Course, was tied to a tree barefoot in the snow and punched in the stomach. Although she did not raise any issue with the training, the incident was reported by Perron's boyfriend and upon leaving the Army photographs were leaked to the media, throwing the Canadian Forces into public disrepute, although Rainville defended himself saying that if he hadn't struck Perron, "she would have lost credibility" with other, male, officers.

Two years prior to his deployment to Somalia, Rainville led an assault against the guard room at the entrance of the Citadelle in Quebec City

Quebec City

Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

, tying up the guards and taking weapons. This exercise to test the security of the installation had been approved by Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Daigle. However, in 2001 Rainville was convicted and faced 14 years imprisonment when it was revealed he had tortured and sodomised

Sodomy

Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...

 fellow soldiers in the regiment.

He also posed for a media photograph dressed in his Canadian uniform to which he added non-regulation knives; he was later characterized as a "Rambo

John Rambo

John Rambo is an iconic fictional character and the basis of the Rambo saga. He first appeared in the 1972 novel First Blood by David Morrell, but later became more famous in the film series, played by Sylvester Stallone...

 type".

Somalia affair

The Somalia Affair

Somalia Affair

The Somalia Affair was a 1993 military scandal later dubbed "Canada's national shame". It peaked with the brutal beating death of a Somali teenager at the hands of two Canadian soldiers participating in humanitarian efforts in Somalia. The crime, documented by grisly photos, shocked the Canadian...

 saw Rainville issue an autonomous 1993 order re-labeling petty thieves at a Canadian military base in Belet Huen as "saboteurs" and authorizing deadly force which resulted in the shooting death of an unarmed Somali named Ahmed Arush. Rainville relied on the argument that a fuel pump

Fuel pump

A fuel pump is a frequently essential component on a car or other internal combustion engined device. Many engines do not require any fuel pump at all, requiring only gravity to feed fuel from the fuel tank through a line or hose to the engine...

  used to service American MedEvac

MEDEVAC

Medical evacuation, often termed Medevac or Medivac, is the timely and efficient movement and en route care provided by medical personnel to the wounded being evacuated from the battlefield or to injured patients being evacuated from the scene of an accident to receiving medical facilities using...

 helicopters had been stolen deliberately to hinder the military effort, while critics pointed out that any saboteurs likely would have ignited the thousands of gallons of fuel surrounding it. Rainville enlisted Corpoal Ben Klick of the PPCLI to lay in a truck bed at night, awaiting potential "saboteurs" with a rifle.

Rainville had offered to buy a case of beer for the first Canadian to shoot a Somalian, "a six-pack for a wound, 24 for a kill".

Later life

When he returned to Canada from Somalia, he was convicted of possessing pyrotechnical devices belonging to the Canadian Forces.