Trent: Garneau a most extraordinary man, and friend

Montreal Gazette

a day ago

During a federal election campaign, we hosted a coffee party for our friend Marc Garneau. The living and dining rooms were full of chairs seconded from every corner of our house. Marc, sitting in a corner sipping coffee, started to speak. Suddenly our cat Eloise jumped into his lap. Without missing a beat or the space of one syllable, Marc kept on speaking. He delivered his entire talk while stroking a cat emitting a buzz-saw purr.
Marc always said that he had no charisma. I once told him that was the only untruth ever to pass his lips. He had a uniquely subtle charisma that the rest of us would do well to copy.
Ever the scientist and ever the rational thinker, Marc would not have wanted me to write anything maudlin about him. I'll try not to.
If anyone on Earth were the polar opposite of a Donald Trump, it would be Marc Garneau. Yet he was deeply respected by all the Americans he met, including president Ronald Reagan.
Only Marc, still a student at the Royal Military College, would race across the Atlantic in a wooden sailboat called The Pickle. Or serve years as a naval captain. Or respond to a newspaper ad in 1983 calling for would-be astronauts. Or put up with living eight years at NASA headquarters in Houston because that's what he had to do to do a second and even a third space shuttle mission.
Marc then ran the Canadian Space Agency before becoming the very model of an anti-politician, running for the Liberal leadership, and serving as a brilliant member of cabinet. Oh, and along the way, he collected a doctorate in engineering and a dozen honorary degrees.
I remember as Westmount's MP, Marc would read passages from the Bible in St. Matthias' Church in a spare, elegant French, with elisions at all the right places. His English was also impeccable, right down to mastering the latest jargon. He was the embodiment of what we would look like if we had managed to make a truly bicultural Canada.
If you read his quiet demeanour as a plain humbleness, you'd be in error. Marc wore his intelligence lightly. You inferred his intelligence, as it wasn't immediately presented. Marc was also conversationally generous. He was soft-spoken, but earnest, with a limitless curiosity. He listened intently. He was respectful and treated everybody, high and low, with equal deference.
Someone said Marc had ice-water in his veins — or in French, sang-froid. That was when he was on duty. But he was never aloof. He competed with himself, not others. He wore a naval uniform, a flight suit, and a shirt-and-tie, but Marc was always the same person as he was when at home with friends and family.
Marc loved his family deeply and always found time for his children and especially his beloved Pam. They were two blocks away, and the four of us, along with a few other couples, would take turns hosting dinner parties. Marc became chatty, enjoying the repartee and joshing in the company of friends, all in a setting where he could let his guard down.
Marc started off writing a book just for his grandchildren to read. But, like so many of his ventures, it grew into a magnificent project for which we should all be deeply grateful. The result was A Most Extraordinary Ride, and it came out last year. In fact, the last task he took on was doing a book tour across Canada.
Marc Garneau was someone only Canada could bring forth. And the world was made better by his passage.
Peter F. Trent, a former inventor and businessman, served five terms as mayor of Westmount and led the Montreal demerger movement. His Merger Delusion was a finalist for the best Canadian political book of 2012.