Marc Garneau
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Captain (N) Dr. Joseph Jean-Pierre Marc Garneau CC, CD, Ph.D., FCASI (born February 23, 1949) was the first Canadian in space. He has taken part in three flights aboard NASA Space shuttles. He was the president of the Canadian Space Agency until he entered politics as the Liberal candidate in Vaudreuil-Soulanges for the 2006 federal election.
He was born in Quebec City and was educated there and in London, England. He gained a degree in engineering physics at the Royal Military College of Canada in 1970 and a doctorate from Imperial College London in 1973.
He joined the Canadian Navy in 1974 to work as an engineer. He first served as a systems engineer aboard Template:Warship until 1976. From there he went as an instructor to the Canadian Forces Fleet School in Halifax. He worked with the Naval Engineering Unit and in 1982 he was promoted to commander.
In 1984 he was seconded to the new Canadian Astronaut Program (CAP), one of six chosen from 4,000 applicants. He flew on the shuttle Challenger, STS-41-G from October 5 to 13, 1984 as payload specialist. He was promoted to captain in 1986 and left the Navy in 1989 to become deputy director of the CAP. In 1992-93 he underwent further training to become a mission specialist. He worked as CAPCOM for a number of shuttle flights and was on two further flights himself - STS-77 (May 19 to 29, 1996) and STS-97 (to the ISS, November 30 to December 11, 2000). He has logged almost 678 hours in space and is now retired as an astronaut.
In February 2001 he was appointed executive vice-president of the Canadian Space Agency, and became its president in November of the same year. Dr. Garneau was installed as the ninth chancellor of Carleton University in 2003.
In August 2003, Captain Garneau was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest honour. He is also honoured with three high schools named after him, one in Ottawa, one in Toronto [1] and another one in Trenton, Ontario.
Captain(N) Garneau is also the Honorary Captain of the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets. In addition, #599 Royal Canadian Air Cadets squadron is named in his honour.
Garneau resigned from his employment with the Canadian Space Agency to run for the Liberal Party of Canada in the January 23, 2006 federal election as a "star candidate". He ran in Vaudreuil-Soulanges represented by Meili Faille of the Bloc Québécois. It is the former riding of Nick Discepola, a long-time Paul Martin supporter. Faille was able to keep her seat by some 9 200 votes. Garneau's defeat is attributed to a strong Conservative candidate that split the federalist vote, the unpopularity of Liberals in Quebec, and his own controversial comments about Quebec separatism compared with Iraq War. He also said during the campaign that he would like to return to space along with separatist leaders Gilles Duceppe and André Boisclair, arguing that they would certainly become federalists, seeing the Earth without its artificial frontiers. This remark was ridiculed as political naivety by his Bloc opponents.