Payette will bring some zest to Rideau Hall
For too long, the governor general had to be an ‘elder statesman.’ How boring
What characteristics do we want in the governor general of Canada? The requirements are many and exacting.
Ideally, a person who speaks both official languages fluently, who has led an exemplary, ethical life, who has demonstrated real public service, who understands the country — and the world, too.
The office seeks the soul of excellence, who has done big things. It asks for a communicator, who can deliver a compelling speech, and who understands the media, old and new. It demands someone who, as the Queen’s representative and de facto head of state and commander-inchief, is comfortable with ceremony and the military.
The job also requires humility, curiosity, ambition and a sense of duty. Can we find all of that in a governor general? Probably not. Still, we try.
The appointment of Julie Payette is brilliant. She is confident, clever, bicultural and an icon, much-lauded at home and abroad (the Order of Canada, 27 honorary degrees). As an astronaut and engineer, she understands science; as a female astronaut, she understands desire. She has lived in many places. She can communicate in six languages. At 53, she brings the right mix of energy and experience.
She is charming, funny and direct. At an event a few years ago, I asked her how she had liked living in Houston. “I didn’t,” she said. “Hot, hot, hot. Couldn’t let my son in the backyard. Scorpions!”
Payette is the biggest, best appointment of this government. It comes as a surprise, though, from a prime minister who has sometimes acted on impulse and sentimentality in making decisions and appointments, seduced by one’s story, youth, gender or ethnicity. It’s why incompetents have landed in cabinet, then been dropped or demoted.
Moreover, for a government that has made reconciliation with Indigenous people its mantra — a historic, principled commitment — it would have been easy to name a representative of that community. Symbolically, what would have sent a stronger signal than an Indigenous Canadian at Rideau Hall?
Presumably the government could not find the right choice; in the past, for example, fluency in French has been an obstacle. But it had the maturity to resist appointing an Indigenous person for the sake of appointing an Indigenous person. Perhaps next time. Meanwhile, it knows there will be opportunities to bring more Indigenous Canadians into national institutions. In December, there will be a vacancy on the Supreme Court of Canada.
By and large, Canada has chosen its governors general well. For too long the model was the “elder statesman” drawn from politics or diplomacy: Vincent Massey, Georges P. Vanier, Roland Michener, Jules Léger. Eminent, earnest and dull.
Then there were the “firsts” among Canadians: Ed Schreyer (youngest), Jeanne Sauvé (woman), Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatchewan), Roméo LeBlanc (Acadian). All were mediocrities. Hnatyshyn struggled in French, Sauvé closed the grounds of Rideau Hall to visitors, Schreyer and LeBlanc were bored and listless.
The appointment of Adrienne Clarkson in 1999 upended things.
She brought style, erudition and imagination. With her husband, the writer and philosopher John Ralston Saul, she celebrated the North, made Government House a showcase of the arts, ideas and cuisine, gave memorable speeches, pioneered the strategic use of the state visit, tried to “Canadianize” the office. She was a smash. (Disclosure: I am friends with the couple.)
Her successor, Michaëlle Jean, was also a repudiation of the éminence grise GG. Elegant and articulate, she faltered. She was slow to renounce her French citizenship before her installation and refused to say, astonishingly, how she voted in the 1995 Quebec referendum. When she had to intervene in the constitutional imbroglio of 2008 — the most important duty of the office — she looked lost. Although scholars remain divided on the constitutionality of Stephen Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament — he cowed her — she missed an opportunity to go on television and explain her decision.
Now, after seven years of the genteel, learned David Johnston — a revival of the avuncular, conservative governor general — we will have a splash of colour and zest at Rideau Hall: a woman, a cosmopolitan, a polymath, a household name. She represents the best in us and will ask the best of us. Bravo.