Julie Payette

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Biography

Julie Payette is Notable.

Julie Payette was the Governor General of Canada from October 2, 2017 to January 22 2021.

Julie Payette was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 20 October 1963 to Andre and Jacqueline Patte nee Carey. In 1980 she was chosen as one of 4 teenagers to attend the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales for her final year of high school. She graduated in 1982. She then entered McGill University in Montreal to study Electrical engineering.

Graduating from McGill in 1986, Julie began working as a systems engineer for IBM in Toronto for two years. In 1988 she entered the University of Toronto to do a Masters Degree in Applied Science in Computer engineering which she successfully completed in 1990.

In 1990 Julie spent a year in Switzerland in the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory. Upon her return to Canada Julie worked for Bell telephone, working on telephone and computer speech recognition.

In 1992, Julie applied to the Canadian Space Agency to become an astronaut. She was chosen as one of just 4 applicants out of a total of 5330 applicants. She spent the next four years in training.

During her training, Julie learned to fly a plane, and acquired a private pilots license. She later undertook Military flight training and acquired the Snowbird Pilots license. She was also certified as a deep sea diver and underwent training to become a specialist for the International Space Station (ISS) specializing in Mobile Robotics. This required her to learn the Russian language.

In 1996, Julie traveled to Houston, Texas where she undertook basic astronaut training and later worked on robotics for the Astronaut Office. Julie was later assigned to 2 Space flights - STS 96 (in 1999) and STS 127 (2009).

On STS 96 Julie Payette became the first Canadian to set foot on the ISS.

After leaving the astronaut corps, she held a number of positions, including as chief operating officer for the Montreal Science Center and serving on the board of the Canadian Olympic Committee.

On July 23 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced her appointment as the 29th Governor General of Canada. She took office on October 2 2017. She resigned on January 22, 2021, after facing accusations of verbally abusing her staff.

Payette has been married twice, first to François Brissette, and secondly to William (Billie) Flynn, with whom she had a son in 2003. Flynn and Payette are now divorced.

Sources

1. ↑ Insert reference here

• Biography, Office of the Governor General.
• Julie Payette (NosOrigines)
• Julie Payette (Wikipedia)
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q240769