While the ratification of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 required the committed involvement of a range of individuals, it is clear that the historic breakthrough could not have happened without the central contribution of David Trimble.
Mr Trimble, who has died after a short illness at the age of 77, was in many ways a reluctant politician who nevertheless developed an intellectual clarity as Ulster Unionist leader which proved crucial at a defining stage.
There can be no doubt about the courage and vision he displayed, and it was striking that all three Belfast-based daily newspapers referred to those personal qualities in their main front page headline yesterday.
Few observers would have predicted the course Mr Trimble ultimately followed when he first became prominent through the hardline Vanguard movement which agitated to bring down the first attempt to establish Stormont power-sharing institutions in 1974.
His emergence as a peace maker looked even more unlikely when his belligerent performance during the 1995 Drumcree dispute, literally hand in hand with Ian Paisley, helped to propel him towards the leadership of his party.
However, a more telling act of joint symbolism also came in Co Armagh three years later when he and Seamus Mallon visited Poyntzpass together to meet the relatives of Damien Trainor, a Catholic, and Philip Allen, a Protestant, who had been shot dead by loyalist extremists in a bar in the village the previous night.
It was a powerful gesture and it helped to create the climate in which the signing of the Good Friday Agreement became possible just a matter of weeks later.
Many twists and turns lay ahead but it was entirely appropriate that Mr Trimble and his SDLP counterpart John Hume were awarded the 1998 Nobel peace prize for their role in the highly pressurised negotiations.
Mr Trimble was well aware of the internal risks he faced and he was probably not particularly surprised when a campaign of vilification orchestrated by the DUP effectively ended his political career by 2005
He may even have smiled quietly to himself in 2007 when the same DUP was able to smoothly enter the kind of arrangement with Sinn Fein which it previously denounced when he was first minister.
Mr Trimble came to know that a partnership approach was the key to progress and ordinary people on all sides of our divided society owe him a deep debt of gratitude.
