Dallaire, a decorated soldier and winner of the Governor General's Award for his best-selling memoir, Shake Hands with the Devil, says he wants to emphasize international human rights and development when he speaks in the Liberal caucus and in the upper chamber.

As a soldier who led a doomed United Nations intervention into Rwanda and ended up watching helplessly as hundreds of thousands were slaughter in a paroxysm of tribal hatred, he's going to watch carefully if the government commits soldiers to similar missions in the future.

"I think that Canada has, in fact, learned a lot from that last Rwandan experience," he said. "It's certainly my ambition to continue to work towards Canada's involvement ethically and morally in advancing human rights."

Defence Minister Bill Graham will have a former general with a lot of bitter experience watching him in the Liberal caucus.

"I'm not so sure how the hell that works inside of government," Dallaire said with a laugh. "I'm looking very much forward to have an opportunity to speak to him and other colleagues on these subjects in maybe an even more candid way."

 Dallaire, son of a Canadian army sergeant and a Dutch war bride, was raised on military bases and joined up as a matter of course. He graduated from Royal Military College and carved out a career as an above-average young officer.

It seemed a natural assignment. He was a French-speaking soldier going to an area of Africa where French was the second language. Canada carried no colonial baggage to inflame local sensitivities.

But the world collapsed on Dallaire and his small force within months of their arrival. The UN ignored his warnings of coming strife.

After it broke out, major international players rebuffed his pleas for more soldiers, leaving him standing as a helpless observer to genocide.

He came home to medals and promotion, but his spirit was broken and he spiralled into depression and alcohol.

His health suffered. Thin, haggard, with his haunted eyes sunken in his thin face, he was another casualty of Rwanda.

But a decade later, after much psychological help, support from his wife and kids and a book into which he poured his troubled soul, Dallaire has bounced back.

He has filled out, although his eyes keep their deep sadness. But he can joke and laugh and he speaks with pride of his son's entry into the army, a third generation of soldiering Dallaires.

Rwanda will never leave him though, and he'll use his Senate seat to make sure that Canadians will never forget either.