Frederick Ralph Sharp General Frederick Ralph Sharp , CMM , DFC , CD ( December 8 , 1915 – June 10 , 1992 ) was a Royal Canadian Air Force officer and Chief of Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces . Education . Sharp was born in Moosomin , Saskatchewan in 1913 and graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in 1934 , student # 2420 . He was raised at Trenton , Ontario . He attended the War Staff College in 1944 . He was a student at the National Defence College , Kingston . After the war , he furthered his education by completing his Masters in Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario . Military career . Following the outbreak of war , he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in Trenton Ontario in July 1939 . He earned his wings as a pilot in Trenton in 1939 . He completed the flying instructor course at Camp Borden in 1939 . He spent over four years [ 51 months ] on instructional duties in Alberta , before being posted overseas as C . O . of No . 408 Bomber Squadron , 6 Bomber Group 26 November 1944 . He won a Distinguished Flying Cross ( DFC ) on 4 May 1945 with No . 408 Goose Squadron . He served as a flying instructor for the BCATP during World War II . He was a squadron commander at the close of the war . In 1946 , he was a member of the Chelsey committee which was instructed to make recommendations about the provision of officers for the active force , about the educational requiresments of candidates , and about the way they should be trained . The committee , headed by Brigadier Leonard McEwan Chelsey ( RMC 1917 ) favored three plans . Plan A proposed to eliminate Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston , Ontario as a source of officers and to use the site as a two year course for military training of university graduates . Plan B proposed to enlarge RMC so it could provide the total annual requirements of the active force , to make it free and to impose an obligation on graduates to serve in the active force . Plan C proposed to enlarge RMC to produce 50 - 70 % of the officers needed and to have a parallel officer training system in universities to prepare the balance . After the war , Sharp served with the Air Force HQ and Central Flying School in Trenton . He served as an exchange officer posted as Directing Staff at the RAF Staff College in Britain . In 1959 , he became the commander of the RCAF Training Command and various posting with NORAD . Sharp was promoted to Air Marshal in the RCAF . He served as Vice Chief of Defence Staff from 1966 . The following year , in 1968 , he was regraded from Air Marshal to Lieutenant General and in January 1969 he was appointed Deputy Commander - in - Chief of NORAD . In 1969 , Sharp was elevated to the rank of General and served as Chief of Defence Staff of the Canadian Armed Forces from 1969 to 1972 . He retired in 1972 and became a partner in a consulting firm until 1979 . In 1983 he joined retired Canadian Ambassador Ross Campbell , as a founding partner in the consulting company InterCon Consultants . He wrote a paper for the July – August 1967 Air University Review on the Reorganization of the Canadian Armed Forces . Family . He was married to Betty Sharp and had two sons , John and Richard , and three daughters , Brenda , Barbara and Elizabeth . Legacy . The papers he collected on the reorganization and the unification of the Canadian Forces are included in the Robert Lewis Raymont fonds at Wilfrid Laurier University . Further reading .