Transportation Minister Makes Special Presentation To Marc Garneau

Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2018 13:40 PM

Transport Minister Marc Garneau left New Brunswick last week with a reminder of his time in space after he was presented with a copy of a collage featuring memorabilia from his 1984 mission.

Garneau's provincial counterpart Bill Fraser was able to present it to Garneau after a funding announcement at the Saint John Airport.

"It's really quite spectacular," says Fraser, noting the original collage includes patches and flags that went into space with Garneau.

Garneau had presented the original copy to then-Lieutenant-Governor George Stanley.

 

Had the pleasure of joining @briangallantnb and welcoming my Federal counterpart Marc Garneau to our beautiful Province today for some great announcements. As you may know, Marc Garneau has had an interesting and varied career. Before he began his political career, culminating in becoming Minister of Transport, he had another title - astronaut. Marc was the first Canadian in space, taking part in three space shuttle flights in 1984, 1996 and 2000. Up until recently, a framed collage of material commemorating Marc Garneau’s October 1984 mission on the Space Shuttle Challenger, has hung in New Brunswick’s principle government building, the Centennial Building. It contains images, the Canadian and New Brunswick flags that were part of the mission and a mission patch. This material with Marc’s signature is now considered a valuable part of the building archival collection. When plans were unveiled last year to fully rehabilitate the Centennial Building, this commemorative piece was removed for safe-keeping. After all these years, it needed a little tender care. We were proud to have had it re-matted and re-framed and it will be hung in a place of honor in the new complex once completed. Premier Gallant and I were pleased to present Marc with a facsimile framed copy of this historic collage.

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Fraser says his department is taking care of the artifacts from the Centennial Building while it's being refurbished and the plaque was found there.

"We have it in safe keeping so that we can make sure it finds a prominent home within one of our government buildings, most likely Centennial when it's refurbished."

Fraser says Garneau was quite impressed with it and plans to hang his copy of the plaque in his office.