In 1958 when Cold War imperatives lead the Army to create a national survival militia, the Regina Rifle Regt recruited Charles at age 16. In 1959 he was transferred to 10th Medium Battery RCA, and in 1960 was sponsored to Royal Roads and later RMC (Kingston) graduating with a BEng (Civil). Assigned to the RCE, Lt Keple had two six-month tours (RCSME, Chilliwack) & (2 Fd Sqn RCE Gagetown), and then three years with 4 Fd Sqn RCE, as part of 2nd Brit Div, in Werl, Germany.
In 1968 Capt Keple went to 4 Wks Coy RCE Montréal but later that year he was chosen for staff-college at RMC of Science, Shrivenham, U.K. In winter 1971 Maj Keple joined the embryonic CFHQ (Ottawa) Chief Engineer staff as Equipment Officer for the full range of engineer materiel resources, while Navy, Army and Air Force procedures, bias, and organizations were theoretically unified into a “yet-to-be-defined” entity. CFHQ blended with NDHQ, and Unification’s myths multiplied.
NDHQ decided that the British staff-college couldn’t meet Canadian needs, so in ’75 Maj Keple repeated Command & Staff College in Toronto, again with honours. LCol Keple was sent to Air Command as BTSO at CFB Portage la Prairie. In 1977 the “static” base was deployed for a month of flood fighting on the Assiniboine River. In 1978 Charles was posted to Air Command HQ (Winnipeg) as SSO MILE Plans.
In 1981, Col Keple returned to Mobile Command, St Hubert. He championed creation of a Command Engineer branch and also served as Divisional Engineer. In 1985, he attended NDC Kingston for global strategic studies, and again was an honour graduate.
He was SECCOS at HQAFCENT (Netherlands) for 3 years, until 1989 when he returned to NDHQ as DGMEO on the DCDS Battle Staff, and as CME Branch Advisor. The unified CF was outfitted in three different uniforms; various CF policies and protocols were fragmented; and decades of under-funding continued. Fortuitously there were opportunities for the CME to demonstrate myriad capabilities essential to the success of Canadian deployments in Cambodia, Pakistan, Somalia, Kuwait, and Croatia. Significant institutionalized constraints and prejudices to the detriment of the CME were “exposed”. Steps were orchestrated to re-establish the CME as an operational force, which the RCE had been for almost a century.
In 1993 Col Keple returned to NATO as SHAPE (Belgium) Chief of Infrastructure. In 1997 he was transferred to the Supplementary Reserve for ten years. Charles was elected National President of the MEAC, tasked to research a single association, appointed and then elected inaugural President of the CMEA. He also served as Vice Chairman of CDA, a director of RUSI (Regina), an RRR Trustee, a RCL member, National Vice President of the Last Post Fund and he received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee Medals, and the SVM.