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A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics And The Pursuit of a Canadian Dream
Marc Garneau
Signal/McClelland and Stewart
It’s been more than 40 years since Marc Garneau made history as the first Canadian astronaut to blast into space — yet he still feels defeated by the challenge of talking about it.
“To this day, I struggle to describe what it was like to see Earth from space,” he writes in his new memoir, A Most Extraordinary Ride.
There’s a note of apology here, and it’s characteristic of a book that readily engages in candid self inquiry, whether in reliving the challenge and excitement of the space program or in discussing both the rewards and frustrations of being a minister in a Justin Trudeau government whose policies he sometimes questioned. Indeed, Garneau seems intent in offering the reader more than just a summary of accomplishments.
“Being honest was something that was inculcated in me, probably mostly by my parents,” he says by phone from his Montreal home. “I had to learn early in my life to face situations where I had frankly screwed up and needed to be honest about why I had screwed up — admitting it to myself rather than denying it.”
Better, therefore, to reject flowery fabrications about the wonders of space travel.
“Over 40 years of doing presentations I’ve sometimes felt close to conveying it and at other times have felt — no this is not good enough.”
By contrast, when it comes to the basics of functioning in a weightless environment, the book is engagingly forthright:
“Even routine tasks that I had long ago mastered on Earth required special training, whether it was preparing and eating food without making a mess, performing daily ablutions or going to the bathroom using a specially designed piece of equipment known as the Waste Management System …”
The image emerges of a Canadian who’s proud of his accomplishments but is measured in his appraisal of them, a devoted family man who has suffered personal tragedy, a right-of-centre Liberal who served in a left-of-centre cabinet and resists demonizing political opponents — and a high-profile figure who in no way can be considered charismatic.
“You know whether you have charisma or whether you don’t, and I learned that early in life,” Garneau, now 75, says with a laugh. “It’s not something you can manufacture — it’s either there or it’s not — and I’m not particularly bothered by not being charismatic. There are more important things in my life.”
That life has been full and productive. Garneau’s three voyages into space are only part of the story. He served as an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, earned a doctorate in engineering from Britain’s Imperial College of Science and Technology, served as president of the Canadian Space Agency, was a member of Parliament for 13 years, and served as minister of transport and briefly as foreign minister.
“I’ve often said I’m more of a civil servant than a politician,” he says now. “Even in the navy I was still a public servant in the sense of being part of government — same when I was an astronaut and later president of the Canadian Space Agency. I got to understand how ministries work before I became a politician, and I think it shaped the way I worked in transport and then in foreign affairs.”
He had been a Montreal MP for seven years when he became transport minister in the newly elected Trudeau government. Garneau had anticipated a cabinet posting — but not this one. “I had no inkling that it would end up being transport. I was really surprised. Yet within a matter of days, I fell in love with it. It was something I related to very well, and as an engineer and a technical person, I realized it was a good fit.”
His aim was to be a “steady competent minister.” And for him that meant maintaining a good relationship with public servants in his department.
The first thing he did in was to spend his early weeks just meeting people who worked in the building. His message: This is a team effort. I’m not just here to tell you what to do.
“I believe in establishing rapport,” Garneau says as he looks back on his cabinet years. “I believe I left my two ministries on very good terms with the people I worked with.”
In 2021, Garneau was abruptly removed from cabinet. “It felt like a punch in the gut,” he writes. “I felt totally blindsided and didn’t know what to think. Had I done something wrong … or was it simply poor chemistry between me and the prime minister? Only he could answer that question and he chose not to do so.”
Garneau’s stoicism allowed him to pick up the pieces and work productively as a backbencher — co-chairing a joint Commons-Senate committee on the thorny issue of medically assisted death. “It was emotionally draining but for me an incredibly satisfying way of closing out my professional career.”
Garneau has been forthright in his belief that Canada should take its foreign policy more seriously, and he has been pointed in his comments about the frequent turnover of ministers in the foreign affairs portfolio. As for Trudeau himself — well, Garneau admits that he only had two or three real contacts with the prime minister during his cabinet years. He’s cautious on this subject, but the perplexity shows.
“On the one hand I prided myself on being capable of doing my job and not having to bother the prime minister,” he says now. “But there are times when you need to talk to your prime minister face to face. In my opinion — and I say it clearly in the book — the barrier of the Prime Minister’s Office was bigger than I had estimated. There was the sense that they were there to run interference for the prime minister.
“What bothered me the most was that when I dealt with someone in the PMO on a particular issue, I was never sure that any of it ever got to him.”
Garneau ended up feeling that Trudeau prefers being isolated. “I don’t care about not being a strong personal friend of the prime minister — I’m a generation older than him — but I wanted to know that he was hearing from me on issues that were important.” Garneau was never sure this was the case.
But he is able to write warmly about people he has genuinely liked from elsewhere on the political spectrum — people such as Jack Layton, John Baird, Stephen Harper, Paul Dewar and Brian Mulroney.
“Let me tell you about something happened that is not in the book — about what happened after my first wife committed suicide. I received a note from the prime minister — Brian Mulroney. He didn’t need to write me something like that. It was an enormous pick-me-up at a time when I was feeling very much at the bottom of the well and feeling a daunting responsibility toward my 11-year-old twins.”
Collegiality is important to Garneau, and in his farewell Commons speech he reminded members on all sides of the House that it was possible to “disagree respectfully.” He’s dismayed by the bitterness and hostility of today’s Parliament and bluntly says that members are demeaning themselves.
“It embarrasses me,” he says. “I’m wondering whether we’ll ever manage to acquire the wisdom to operate in a proper way as adults.”