Julie Payette
Julie Payette CC CMM COM CQ CD FCAE (French pronunciation: [ʒyli pajɛt]; born October 20, 1963) is a Canadian engineer, scientist and former astronaut who served from 2017 to 2021 as Governor General of Canada, the 29th since Canadian Confederation.[1][2][3]
Julie Payette
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Payette holds engineering degrees from McGill University and the University of Toronto. She worked as a research scientist before joining the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in 1992 as a member of the Canadian Astronaut Corps. She completed two spaceflights, STS-96 and STS-127, and has logged more than 25 days in space. She also served as capsule communicator at NASA Mission Control Center in Houston and from 2000 to 2007 as CSA's chief astronaut.
In July 2013, Payette was named chief operating officer for the Montreal Science Centre. She also held a number of board appointments, including the National Bank of Canada.[4] On July 13, 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Queen Elizabeth II had approved the appointment of Payette as the next governor general of Canada.[1][2][5] She was invested on October 2, 2017.[6]
Payette resigned on January 21, 2021, following the conclusion of a workplace review that found she had "belittled, berated and publicly humiliated Rideau Hall staff" and "created a toxic, verbally abusive workplace".[7] The review was initiated by the Privy Council Office to investigate accusations of harassment of civil servants in the Office of the Governor General.[8] The report's official goal was not to validate nor make findings of fact, as it only relied on what interview participants reported.[9] She is the second governor general to have resigned the office, after Roméo LeBlanc (who resigned due to health issues), the first to resign due to scandal, and the first to have left a vacancy upon resignation.[10][11]
Education and early career[edit]
Payette was born on October 20, 1963, in Montreal, Quebec,[12] and lived in the Ahuntsic neighbourhood, attending Collège Mont-Saint-Louis and Collège Regina Assumpta.[13][14] In 1982 she completed an International Baccalaureate diploma at the United World College of the Atlantic in South Wales, United Kingdom.[15]
For her undergraduate studies, Payette enrolled in McGill University where she completed a Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering in 1986, after which she completed a Master of Applied Science degree in computer engineering at the University of Toronto in 1990. Her thesis focused on computational linguistics, a field of artificial intelligence.[13][16][17] She is a retired member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec.[18][19]
She speaks French and English, some Spanish, Italian, Russian and German.[20]
During her schooling, between 1986 and 1988, Payette also worked as a systems engineer for IBM Canada's Science Engineering division. From 1988 to 1990, as a graduate student at the University of Toronto, she was involved in a high-performance computer architecture project and worked as a teaching assistant. At the beginning of 1991, Payette joined the communications and science department of the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland, for a one-year visiting scientist appointment. When she returned to Canada, in January 1992, she joined the Speech Research Group of Bell-Northern Research in Montreal where she was responsible for a project in telephone speech comprehension using computer voice recognition.[21]
Personal life[edit]
Payette has been married and divorced twice, first to François Brissette in the 1990s,[62] and secondly to William Flynn, with whom she had a son in 2003,[63] and from whom she divorced in 2015.[64] Payette plays the piano and has sung with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Tafelmusik Chamber Choir.[65] Currently, she sings with the Ottawa Bach Choir.[66] Among her other hobbies are running, skiing, racquet sports, and scuba diving.[19]
In July 2011, Payette was driving and struck and killed a pedestrian who had stepped off a curb to cross the road when she should not have. The case was closed in 2012 as she was found not at fault.[67]
She was also charged with second degree assault in Maryland, on November 24, 2011. At least one anonymously quoted source has alleged that the victim of the assault was her then-husband, Billie Flynn. Though the charges were later dropped, the couple split several weeks later and subsequently divorced. Payette has stated that charges were "unfounded" but refused to comment further on the circumstances leading to her being charged with assault.[68] These incidents raised questions on the vetting process as she had been selected by Prime Minister Trudeau without consulting an ad hoc committee of experts. Such a committee was the means by which outgoing Governor General David Johnston had been selected by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. Once Payette was named Governor General-designate, media organizations pressed for the release of the divorce records, which Payette initially attempted to keep sealed before abandoning the bid.[69][70]
Viceregal styles of
Julie Payette
(2017–2021)
- Her Excellency the Right Honourable
- Son Excellence la très honorable
- Your Excellency
- Votre Excellence