Marc Garneau has lived several lives in his 75 years.
He holds the distinction of being one of Canada’s first astronauts, and the first one to fly in space. Additionally, he has served as a naval officer, a member of Parliament, and a cabinet minister.
With this rich background, it was time for Garneau to share his life story, including the years spent out of the public eye, in his new memoir, A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream.
On October 10 at 7 p.m., Garneau will visit The Book Keeper as part of his press tour.
The Journal spoke with the former astronaut from his home in Montreal ahead of his Sarnia visit.
The Journal: Congratulations on releasing your memoir, is it strange going back and reliving so many of your life events as you put them down on paper?
Marc Garneau: It is in a way. Some of it was still pretty fresh in my mind, obviously the most recent stuff, and my public life. I became an astronaut 40 years ago, so a lot of it is already out there, and so I could reference a lot of things just to make sure I was getting my facts straight. But the very interesting part was basically the first 35 years of my life before I became an astronaut, and there, of course, there wasn't as much. I was a private citizen, and so there I had to consult my family and try to make sure that I got everything right.
Over time, your memory is not as good as you think it is, or you tend to remember things a certain way when it maybe wasn't quite that way, and so I enjoyed that exercise. And it was a little bit weird for me to discover that maybe I remembered certain things a little bit differently. And I think that happens to everybody. But I enjoyed sort of, if you like, correcting in my own head and putting it down on paper.
TJ: You mentioned your family. What did they think about all of this when you told them?
MG: Well, I told my children I was going to write the book for them. The reason I did that was because I had been speaking to my mother about 15 years ago when she was still alive. And I said, ‘you know, Mom, I don't know very much about you in the first 30 years of your life. You never talked about it….And so tell me about it.’
It was a bit like pulling teeth to get her to talk about it.But it turned out she had an interesting early life. She was born a few years before the Great Depression. And so things were not all that easy. And she and her family moved around a lot because her father was looking for work and ended up working in Toronto in parts of New Brunswick, where she came from, working in Boston, basically trying to find a way to get a job during a very difficult time.
My mother was one of six sisters, who all ended up becoming nurses. And anyway, I found her early life very, very interesting. And I realized maybe it's a good idea for me to put that down on paper for my own kids, because they don't necessarily know about those early days. And I'm glad I did.
TJ: Did your kids share with you anything that sort of surprised them that they learned about you from reading the book?
MG: Quite a bit from the early days. I think that the realization that perhaps I was a little bit of a rebel in my early days, that I did some frankly stupid things. And you know, I was immature and I lacked judgment. Fortunately, it worked out that I was able to learn from those experiences and adjust my behaviour and go forward. So even though I screwed up, if you want to put it that way, a few times in my early days, it ended up being a very constructive exercise each time because I learned something from it and it helped me go forward.
TJ: While writing the book did you ever look back and wonder how you fit so much into your life? You’ve been an astronaut, politician, and served in the Navy. Does it ever surprise you how much you’ve accomplished?
MG: Well, it didn't until I decided to write the book, and it was all written. I realized, my goodness, I did pack a lot in 75 years. I've had the privilege of doing some very, very interesting things in my life, and I think, you know, the reason for it, and that's one of the things I try to talk about in the book, is how can you pack a lot of things into your life,
I think it comes from the fact that I like challenges, I like adventure, I'm willing to tolerate a certain amount of risk in my life, failure does not throw me off, and I learned from failure and really the fact that I remember talking to some people who had retired, this was a number of years ago, and you hear this sometimes from people after they've retired that they regret that they didn't do certain things when they were younger. They look back with a certain amount of sadness that they didn't take up a particular challenge and they decided to play it safe.
I don't think you should hold back. Despite the fact that sometimes I've failed in some of the things I've wanted to do. Overall, I have to say, I have a great deal of peace of mind that I've used my 75 years pretty well.
TJ: Does it still blow your mind that you were the first Canadian to fly in space?
MG: It does every day because when I did apply, and the reason that this opportunity came up is because Canada already had its own space program and had been involved in space for 20 years but on the non-human side, with things like communication satellites. And we approached NASA and said, look, you're designing and building a new vehicle called the Space Shuttle, and we'd like to build the robotic arm for it. Would you allow us to do it? We call the Canadarm, of course.
And so NASA wanted to thank us and said, look, in recognizing what you just did, we'd like to offer two Canadians the opportunity to fly it…Canada said great we'll go out there and find some astronauts.
So in 1983 a full-blown ad campaign started in the papers and on the radio…I saw this ad one day when I was in the Navy. I was very happy with my career in the Navy but I just couldn't ignore this. This was an opportunity for an incredible adventure on the frontier of space which was still pretty new at that time and I just couldn't resist it.
TJ: Incredible. You’re coming to Sarnia, and as we all know another famous astronaut is from here, Chris Hadfield. He's gone on to write many books. Now that you are releasing your memoir, has the writing bug bit you too?
MG: I do have the writing bug, but I haven't sort of decided whether I'm going to use it to write anything more at this point. Fiction or nonfiction, Chris and I, of course, are buddies and he gave me copies.
In fact, I spoke to young children here in my neighbourhood recently about a book that Chris wrote for children. He's written several books for children, and it was really fun to read. So maybe a book for children might be something. I don't know, I'm leaving my options open.
