Grateful that such a man existed

To me, Marc Garneau always had the Right Stuff

Naturally you needed a man with the courage to ride on top of a rocket, and you were grateful that such men existed.

The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe, 1979

Growing up as a suburban kid in Canada during the 1980s, there were few things in the popular culture of that time that captured my attention more than the 80s movies The Right Stuff and Top Gun. Like so many young kids, I was fascinated by space, exploration and pushing the limits of what you thought was possible. With the help of your imagination you could be riding a rocket down your street and not just your BMX bike. You wondered about the worlds beyond our solar system as you gazed upon the stars from your backyard on warm summer nights. These movies cultivated those interests for kids like me. They were both captivating and exciting, but for many young people they also contained a subtle and formative message about service and pursuing your dreams.

The thought of strapping yourself into a rocket or a fighter jet was a scary and strangely exhilarating notion, but taking these risks for your country also fostered a feeling of patriotism and service above self. The importance of public service and of volunteering was certainly fostered in me by my family from a very young age, but movies like these helped a young person combine the desire for adventure alongside the nobility of serving a higher purpose. For young men like me who were looking for role models and trying to determine the path we should take in life, these movies were important guideposts on that journey.

The Right Stuff was released in the fall of 1983 and Top Gun was the blockbuster of the summer of 1986. I remember seeing the Right Stuff a few years after it came out on one of our early VCRs. I saw Top Gun in the theatre around the same time. Both films are fused into my childhood consciousness. They both also exemplified the American exceptionalism of 1980s cinema, which set the tone for popular culture in North America. Whether the leading man was the iconic, real-life astronaut (and future Senator) John Glenn or the fictional fighter pilot ‘Maverick’, these movies portrayed American heroes who accomplished great things and took huge risks in the pursuit. They were draped in the American flag and in the Americana of the early NASA era. Both films were also built on themes from the politics of their time and the imagery and oratory of great figures like Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.

In Canada, we had a much more subdued ecosystem of heroes. It was often difficult for us to forge our own cultural identity when we were inundated with such exciting and almost overwhleming popular culture from the United States. There were, of course, the hockey players we admired and emulated as kids in our road hockey games, but there were no iconic figures or inspiring rhetoric in our popular culture. The National Film Board produced Canada Vignettes in the late 1970s and some were quite entertaining, but these quaint animated shorts could hardly compete with the blockbusters of American culture.

Fortunately for me, this all seemed to change midway through the 1980s. In December 1983, the National Research Council introduced the first cadre of Canadian astronauts with great fanfare and media coverage. I remember the excitement surrounding the news when the 6 finalists from the Canadian Astronaut Program search were announced at the conclusion of a competition that had attracted 4,300 applicants from across Canada. Less than a year after that announcement, one Canadian out of those six was plucked from relative obscurity and thrust into icon status as he blasted into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger becoming Canada’s first astronaut on October 5, 1984. That person was Royal Canadian Navy Commander Marc Garneau.

The Impact of Role Models

I remember being fascinated as I watched the news with my parents. Marc Garneau was selected as one of the six Canadian astronauts. I was only ten years old at the time, but I distinctly remember him because Marc was wearing a military uniform in the coverage surrounding the announcement. In contrast to the US, where all of the astronaut candidates featured in The Right Stuff came from military test pilot backgrounds, Marc Garneau was the only military officer selected amongst the six Canadian astronauts. To me, Garneau stood out from the beginning and cut a dashing and heroic figure as a Canadian naval officer who was ready to sail to the heavens. With this in mind, it was no surprise that Marc was selected to be the first of those six Canadians to blast into space less than a year after he made his debut as a Canadian astronaut.

This was exciting to me and thousands of Canadian kids. The space shuttle program was only three years old and each launch received a lot of media attention. Now, a Canadian had entered the pantheon of heroes in our popular culture and proved that Canadians could reach for the stars and bravely accomplish great things just like the Americans could. Marc played the role as our first astronaut with characteristic Canadian modesty, but also with steely determination, bravery and remarkable professionalism. These became the hallmarks of his personal style that he would carry with him from the space program to politics. It was also an example of the character of a man that I grew to respect over my lifetime more for his personal conduct on the ground than his exploits high above the earth.

While Marc would return to space again in 1996 as a mission specialist and for a final time in 2000 logging over 677 total hours of time in space, it is his status as the ‘first man’ that cemented his place as a Canadian role model and hero. As we saw in the tributes to him in the days following his death, he served as a mentor and role model to Chris Hadfield and the Canadian astronauts who would follow in his footsteps, but also to thousands more Canadians who marveled at the night sky and dreamed about traveling into space.

On a personal level, when I began to think about what I wanted to do after high school in the late 80s, I often thought about Marc Garneau and the route he took to becoming an astronaut. I learned that Marc had attended the Royal Military College (RMC) and became a naval engineer and senior officer in the Royal Canadian Navy. This led me to explore the grounds of the RMC when I worked in Kingston during the summer before grade 13. As I learned about the college and the ideals of ‘Truth, Duty, Valour’, I was drawn into the idea of being part of this special institution and its ethos. Following the path Marc had taken held great appeal to an idealistic young man in search of purpose and adventure.

It was the influence of Top Gun, however, that led me to deviate slightly from Marc’s path. I decided I would pursue the path of fighter pilot in the military, so in my final year of high school I began the application process for the RMC. I joined the Canadian Armed Forces just a few days before my graduation in June 1991, and while my journey took various deviations from ‘the plan’ from that point on - the biggest being me becoming a helicopter navigator and not a fighter pilot - it was all a great adventure that started with looking to Marc Garneau as a role model at a critical turning point in my life. I have never forgotten that.

The importance of role models in the life of young people cannot be overstated. I was not the only young person impacted by the patriotic pop culture of the 1980s. The release of Top Gun in 1986 led to a 100,000 applicant increase in US Navy recruiting the year after the movie was released. Between Top Gun and the recent sequel Maverick, you can understand why the United States Navy honoured Tom Cruise for his lifetime of support for recruitment and positive imagery around military service. I can attest that the movie had a similar impact in Canada because when I attended the aircrew selection course as part of applying to the military in 1991, most of the candidates from across Canada spoke about Top Gun being a big part of their interest in flying. One candidate even brought a poster from the movie to post on the wall of the room he was staying in for just one night over the two-day selection course. Inspiration and motivation from role models combined with the ‘need for speed’ from Hollywood drew a lot of young people into a life of service in the 1980s and 90s.

Strong Moral Fibre

Marc Garneau retired from the Canadian Armed Forces at the senior officer rank of Captain (Navy) before continuing his work as an astronaut and later a senior leader and President of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). In 2006, he resigned from the CSA to run for parliament. Despite being a star candidate, he lost his first election by a wide margin. He persevered and was elected as a Member of Parliament just two years later serving in opposition for seven years until the Liberals returned to power in 2015. In government, Marc served in cabinet as Minister of Transport and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Living up to his strong reputation as an astronaut, Marc was a politician who was always well briefed, punctual and incredibly professional. He was also very respectful to his colleagues, including those in other parties. I saw this firsthand. While cabinet ministers receive the honourific title of ‘Honourable’ automatically as a result of their position, Marc Garneau was someone who certainly deserved the title from the way he conducted himself.

It surprised most observers that the most experienced person in the House of Commons was excluded from the post-2021 election cabinet. Marc took that in stride like the professional he was. He did not lash out, nor did he demand any special treatment or appointment. He just continued to do his work professionally and with the best interests of his riding and country in mind. I spoke to him after that slight telling him that he remained my childhood hero and ‘my favourite Liberal MP’. He just smiled and did not say a bad word about his exclusion or the people who had made the decision. That made me admire him even more.

The news of Marc’s sudden passing last month shocked me as a friend and former parliamentary colleague, but it also struck me more deeply as someone who had to confront the death of one of the heroes from my youth. It is certainly a reminder that you are getting older when a role model passes away, but it is also an important opportunity to revisit what made you admire them in the first place. It led me to think about my childhood dreaming of the 1980s and of joining the military and attending the RMC in the 1990s. I also got to think of my years in Ottawa when I got to become friends with a childhood hero. I began writing this essay in the days following the news of Marc’s passing, but I had to put it aside to properly reflect on his life and its intersection with mine.

Marc Garneau was someone I have admired for most of my life. From the age of ten to the time of his passing, I had looked up to him as a great Canadian. Most importantly, at the most critical juncture in my life I looked to his conduct and his character to guide my own. Outside of my family and the various teachers and coaches who had made a strong impact on my development as a person, Marc was the only ‘famous’ Canadian I had looked up to as I made the life decisions that marked my transition from adolescence to adulthood.

This is why it was such a tremendous honour for me to serve in the House of Commons with Marc three decades after I had watched him in his naval uniform on television as a kid. I was now a peer - of sorts - with someone I had admired since childhood. This is a rare honour that few people will ever get to experience. I told Marc about my admiration for him when I first met him in a corridor in Confederation Building a few months after my 2012 by-election. He just smiled with the polite demeanor of someone who had heard a version of this childhood admiration story a thousand times. He then changed the conversation to ask me about my time at the RMC and about my exceedingly average time in the military. I will never forget that. Great character is demonstrated by the respect and full attention someone like Marc would give to a stranger, even if that stranger was a keen new MP who looked up to him. Marc made our first meeting not about my childhood hero, but about his interest in me.

In 2013, when Senator Romeo Dallaire (another RMC grad) and I began a mental health event for Veterans and first responders, I remember talking to Marc about mental health and the military. He told me that early in his career there were still some military documents that described mental health as a “Lack of Moral Fibre” in the people impacted by trauma. Marc went on to add that he found the term deeply offensive because the fact that people had joined the military and were taking risks for their country showed that they had strong moral fibre and character as a person. He said that an injury - physical or mental - could never diminish the strong moral fibre of a person who chose to put on a uniform. This exchange stayed with me. It also inspired me and contributed to my work on mental health as both an MP and a few years later as Minister. In my forties, I was still learning from my childhood role model.

My last interaction with Marc was also typical of his gracious nature. He was resigning his seat a few months before I was, so we met in his office as he was starting to pack things up. I thanked him for his service and spoke once again about how much I appreciated serving with him. He told me he was writing a book and would remain engaged in things we both cared about. At the end of the meeting, I presented him with a bag of Buddy Check coffee that a Veteran-led business had given to me to give to the Veterans in the House of Commons and Senate. They hoped we could promote it because some of the proceeds from the coffee sales went to Veteran causes. Not only did Marc do the standard ‘grip and grin’ pose with the coffee at the end of the meeting, but true to his nature, Marc did his own social media post promoting the coffee a few weeks later. He remembered and took a photo of him making Buddy Check coffee from his kitchen in Montreal. That was quitessentially Marc. Helping others and never forgetting his roots in the military during his final days as a Member of Parliament.

In the days and weeks after Marc’s passing, I thought about these little memories a lot. Marc was the embodiment of strong moral fibre through his brave exploits, but also from the way he conducted himself far from the glare of the television cameras. He treated others with respect and had empathy in his role as a heroic public figure and as a politician. It was his impact on others that led to so many Canadians being profoundly moved by his passing. From fellow astronauts to scientists to parliamentarians, most of the tributes spoke about the special role Marc had played in their life. Marc Garneau was a man of great accomplishments, but how he treated and inspired others is truly his greatest legacy. While he has ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’, Marc Garneau’s impact and example will continue to ripple across our country in the months and years to come. I hope his family and friends find solace in that fact.