Marc Garneau, a former military officer who became the first Canadian to fly to space before pursuing a second career in federal politics under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has died. He was 76.
His death was announced on Wednesday in a statement from his wife, Pamela Garneau, who said that Mr. Garneau had been receiving treatment for a brief illness. She did not specify the cause of death or say where he had died. The couple lived in Montreal.
“Marc faced his final days with the same strength, clarity and grace that defined his life,” she said in the statement.
Mr. Garneau, a third-generation military officer, was stationed at the National Defense Headquarters in Ottawa, leading its communications and electronic warfare section, when, one evening in 1983, a newspaper ad caught his eye: Canada was looking for astronauts.
It set him on a path to space.
Mr. Garneau made his first voyage in 1984 on the space shuttle Challenger, its sixth flight that year. His duties included measuring atmospheric pollution and water vapor at specific points during the Earth’s orbit.
He flew to space twice more, in 1996 and 2000, on Endeavour (Challenger had exploded in 1986, killing all seven crew members on board), and was appointed the head of the Canadian Space Agency in 2001.
In that role, he helped create Canada’s space strategy, set up new partnerships with China and India and oversaw Canada’s contributions to the International Space Station.
When his tenure ended in 2005, Mr. Garneau joined the Liberal Party of Canada. He was elected to Parliament in 2008, representing a district in Montreal. He sought the party’s leadership in 2013 but dropped out of the race when it became clear he would lose to Mr. Trudeau, the clear front-runner.
After revitalizing the Liberal Party and bringing it to a resounding victory in 2015, Mr. Trudeau, as prime minister, brought Mr. Garneau into his cabinet as transport minister. Mr. Garneau was not immediately thrilled by the role, he wrote in his autobiography, “A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream” (2024), because he preferred one that was more relevant to his expertise in space and the navy. But he warmed up to it and served for six years.
The same could not be said of his tenure in politics, which seemed to end on an icy note: Mr. Garneau was removed from the federal cabinet in 2021 and left Parliament in 2023.
Joseph Jean-Pierre Marc Garneau was born on Feb. 23, 1949, in Quebec City, one of four sons of André Garneau, a brigadier general who served in World War II, and Jean (Richardson) Garneau, a nurse who met her future husband while treating him in a hospital in Montreal before he left for battle. (Mr. Garneau’s grandfather Gérard Garneau was a colonel who fought in World War I.)
Mr. Garneau took pride in his Catholic upbringing, shaped by two distinct Canadian identities: his mother’s roots in Atlantic Canada, and his father’s French Canadian side from Quebec, which included several prominent politicians.
Mr. Garneau was recruited into the Royal Military College of Canada and studied engineering as a navy cadet at campuses in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, and Kingston, Ontario, before winning a postgraduate research scholarship at Imperial College London.
He married his first wife, Jacqueline Brown, in 1973, and she later gave birth to twins, Yves and Simone. Ms. Brown died in 1987. In 1992, he married Pamela Soame, a nurse in the Canadian Armed Forces; they had two sons, Adrien and George.
Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. Garneau served in the navy in various engineering roles, overseeing the maintenance of sonar, weapon systems and other electronic equipment.
At that time, Canada had been developing robotic arms that were used on NASA’s shuttles. As a show of appreciation, the agency offered a spot on its crew for two Canadians, one for each of two separate missions. (Bob Thirsk was selected as a backup.)
“I felt myself vacillating between restrained excitement and the cold hard truth of how slim the odds were of being chosen,” Mr. Garneau wrote in his autobiography.
The odds went his way, and Mr. Garneau was selected among an initial group of 4,300 applicants. He spent eight days in space, or 133 orbits, on that first mission.
His two flights on Endeavour were markedly different because of the safety measures imposed after the Challenger explosion. One of the biggest changes was that the crew uniform now consisted of orange pressure suits instead of the jumpsuit he wore the first time.
Mr. Garneau drew upon his engineering knowledge in 2019, while he was transport minister, when two Boeing 737 Max jets crashed because of computer system failures. In an unusual move, Mr. Garneau announced that his department would conduct its own review and investigate the Federal Aviation Administration’s certification process for the aircraft.
He was appointed to the high-profile post of minister of foreign affairs in 2021 and was soon grappling with the turmoil that followed the Taliban’s seizing of power in Afghanistan, including evacuating Afghans who had assisted the Canadian military’s operations in the country.
His time as the country’s top diplomat was brief; Mr. Trudeau removed Mr. Garneau from the cabinet after nine months.
Mr. Garneau did not reveal his feelings at the time, nor when he left politics in 2023, but he later wrote in his autobiography that the moment was a “punch in the gut.”
Still, being in space had given him an expansive perspective.
“It is a magical place,” Mr. Garneau said in 2002 on “Ideacity,” a Canadian television lecture series.
“You’re flying,” he added. “You are unshackled. You can do anything you want, and what it does is it unshackles your imagination.”
Vjosa Isai is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Toronto, where she covers news from across Canada.
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