General Service Medal (Canada)

The General Service Medal (GSM) (Médaille du service général) is a service medal of Canada established by Her Majesty The Queen in March 2004 and presented for the first time on 29 November 2004. It is presented to members of the Canadian Forces, or members of allied forces for deployment outside of Canada with Canadian Forces, though not necessarily in a theater of operations, to provide direct support, on a full-time basis, to operations in the presence of an armed enemy.

History
The medal was initially only awarded with one ribbon. Bars were to be attached to denote the area or mission which qualified for recognition. These two bars were titled "ALLIED FORCE" and "ISAF+FIAS". In 2009, the GSM was modified to abolish the existing system of bars. These bars were replaced with ribbons denoting specific a theater or service. This allows the use of bars to recognize multiple rotations when appropriate. As a result, recipients of the original GSM with the ALLIED FORCE bar must remounted their medal without the bar and using the new ALLIED FORCE ribbon. Recipients of the medal with the ISAF+FIAS bar needed only to have the medal remounted without the bar on the same ribbon.