National Post (National Edition)
In a selfie-stick world, Julie Payette is a model of privacy.
The modern world, it seems to me, doesn’t know quite what to make of the great Canadian astronaut Julie Payette: She is a long-time public figure now on the brink of occupying one of the country’s highest public offices, and yet she deeply values and tenaciously protects her privacy.
On this selfie-stick planet, where people voluntarily Instagram what they’re eating and wearing and post their every small thought on social media, she is an anomaly.
For about a month, the woman who will be the next governor general fought tooth and nail in a Maryland court to seal her divorce proceedings.
The process began in July when her lawyers filed a motion to seal the file on the same day that the online news site iPolitics first reported that in 2011, police had charged Payette with second-degree assault — a charge that was, shortly after, withdrawn and later purged from official records.
The incident in which she was, however briefly, charged took place on Nov. 24 that year in Piney Point, Md., where Payette was then living in a pretty beachfront home with her former husband, retired RCMP pilot and now test pilot William Flynn.
The couple split up shortly afterwards.
Flynn was the victim of the alleged assault, as the divorce files reveal.
In one hearing, Payette’s lawyer Bryan Dugan remarked: “Obviously, there’s no issue with domestic violence.”
A few minutes later, Sarah J. Zimmerman, who represented Flynn, snapped: “There actually is an issue with domestic violence. Ms. Payette was arrested for assault in Maryland while the parties were living in Maryland. I just want the record to be clear on that.”
After a pause, Dugan punched back: “The comment about the assault is outrageous…That case was dismissed and has been expunged.” The lawyers sniped at one another a bit more, but that was pretty much that.
Though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resolutely refrained from comment — his officials refusing to say whether he’d been aware of the charge before he announced her appointment — Payette acknowledged it, but strongly declared her innocence and asked people to “respect my private life.”
But not long after the iPolitics story appeared, both CTV and the Toronto Star reported on another incident that had occurred earlier the same year — Payette was behind the wheel when a 55-year-old woman named Theresa Potts was tragically struck and killed.
After an eight-month investigation, the Star reported, detectives with the St. Mary’s County Sheriff concluded that Potts had stepped into the path of Payette’s car against a red light.
In 2012, police closed the case.
But the two stories with their separate revelations, coupled with the PMO’s reluctance to say if the government knew about them before Payette’s appointment, raised a number of questions — both about whether there had even been a vetting process and Payette’s character.
After all, the governor general’s role isn’t merely ceremonial, though in practice it mostly is.
GGs are acting heads of state, and as such, are also the last check and balance in ensuring Canada has a functional Parliament.
They have prerogative powers, to be exercised only in times of constitutional crisis, as happened in December of 2008 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper, facing a no-confidence vote, asked then-Governor General Michaelle Jean to suspend Parliament for two months. She granted the request, giving the Conservatives a reprieve to stave off a proposed Liberal-NDP coalition.
So the role is important, and absent any public selection process, it falls to the press to do the digging.
And when that first shallow dig turned up two nuggets, it should have been easy pickings to get the rest because in the United States, the public’s right to know and freedom of the press are more valued than in this country.
But then Payette moved to remove the divorce file from the public record, citing her concern about the impact publicity would have upon the couple’s son.
In response, a coalition of media representatives — Postmedia, CBC, CTV, iPolitics, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star — hired a lawyer to challenge her, making it clear from the start they weren’t seeking any information about the son.
The files were put under a temporary seal, pending a hearing.
Maryland Circuit Court Judge David W. Densford rejected Payette’s lawyer’s arguments for secrecy and plea for privacy.
Payette promptly appealed the decision — and that could have gone into November, past the Oct. 2 date when she will be installed as governor general.
Then, this past Monday, Payette abruptly abandoned her appeal, meaning the files would be back in public view.
She issued a statement, saying that while she appreciated the role of the press in reporting on past events of public figures, “as a mother, I need to be mindful of the impact on my family.
“Very few families are immune from difficult moments in life, mine included.” She spoke of the “fractured relationships and often, a sad parting of ways” that are a common reality of divorce, and that in the interest of transparency “and to leave no doubt,” she had dropped the appeal.
The files are now open, and in the scheme of divorce battles what they reveal is a split that was for the most part mild, even civil. One judge called the couple’s parenting arrangement a model of such agreements, though it’s clear that as is often the case, they sometimes executed it imperfectly.
Julie Payette, in short, wasn’t hiding anything dark and awful, rather just the usual wounds and hurts, self-inflicted and otherwise, common to most adults of 53.
In the immortal words of the American writer Gertrude Stein, who said it about the city of Oakland, there is no there there.