One giant leap for Garneau

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/10/2024 (364 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At a 2016 townhall in Lac-Mégantic, Que., a man stood up, holding a spike he had recovered from the ashes of the railway car explosion that devastated the town three years earlier.

The man handed the spike to then-Transport Minister Marc Garneau, telling him it was a symbol to remind him of his responsibilities as minister, “the 47 people killed in his town and of the need to do better,” Garneau writes in his memoir A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream.

Garneau returned two years later, holding the spike high as he announced funding for a rail bypass that would prevent oil tanker cars and other dangerous cargo from traveling through the centre of town ever again.

The rail bypass is just one example in Garneau’s memoir of the astronaut-turned-cabinet minister working with others to make things right and to do the right thing.

While the engineer in Garneau is focused on finding practical solutions to significant problems, the former naval officer in him is a stickler for the rule book.

That trait may explain why he’s no longer a cabinet minister.

“It felt like a punch in the gut,” Garneau writes of being dumped from cabinet by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the 2021 federal election.

“I had been dismissed. I felt totally blindsided. Had I done something wrong and if so, what? Was it simply poor chemistry between me and the prime minister?” he laments.

Garneau was born in Quebec City, a product of Canada’s two solitudes. His father was a bilingual francophone military officer and his mother an English-speaking nurse. Garneau grew up speaking English at home and French at school.

Being bilingual turned out to be an asset when Garneau, following a childhood dream, answered a newspaper ad and was selected by NASA in 1983 to become the first Canadian in space.

Garneau flew three missions over 17 years, operating the Canadarm to help build the International Space Station and performing experiments that can only take place in space.

He shared his experiences through the media and in personal appearances with hundreds of thousands of school children, scientists and other Canadians, hoping to inspire others to see the majesty and grandeur of Earth and the stars as he does.

When he left NASA, he was invited to join the Canadian Space Agency, quickly becoming its president. As a bureaucrat, Garneau was often frustrated by decisions made at the political level, so he jumped at the chance to run for parliament as a Liberal in a Montreal-area riding in the 2006 election.

Soundly defeated, he bounced back for another round, winning a different Montreal seat in the 2008 election and entering the Commons on the Opposition benches.

After the Liberals won the 2015 election, Garneau became Minister of Transport and was able to announce the rail bypass. In 2021, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he had the satisfaction of welcoming back from their arbitrary imprisonment in China Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, known as “the two Michaels.”

Perhaps Garneau was as gobsmacked by his ejection from cabinet as he claims. But if this were a novel, every reader would have seen the storm clouds gathering.

Garneau ran against Trudeau for the leadership in 2013, when the Liberals were still in Opposition, and asked him publicly what made him so sure he was worthy of the job.

After the 2015 election, the new prime minister appointed him to Transport. But the look on Garneau’s face betrayed his disappointment that he didn’t get Defence, Industry or Foreign Affairs.

Then there’s that rule book, the supreme authority for Garneau and everyone else in the navy and at NASA, but treated as an annoying Jiminy Cricket by his new boss.

Garneau takes full advantage of this opportunity to say what he really thinks about everything from the resignation of Attorney-General Jody Wilson-Raybould over Trudeau’s interference in the SNC-Lavalin case to the PM’s decision to call the 2021 election two years early, for political advantage.

If Garneau was even half as candid with Trudeau at the time as he is with his readers, he should have foreseen that a clash — and crash — was inevitable.

Garneau can take great satisfaction in the contributions he made to space exploration and political life in Canada. He has chronicled them well.

The volume features photos, including one of Garneau smiling, surrounded by elementary school children all reaching for a globe, with the caption, “All children love space and the planets.”

Garneau’s story may inspire some young Canadians to emulate him in space, in Ottawa or in some other way.

We would be the better for it.

Donald Benham is a freelance writer living near Beausejour.

Marc Garneau will launch A Most Extraordinary Ride in Winnipeg on Wednesday, Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.