Born
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
The same city as Roberta Bondar, Canada's first woman in space. Raised in Dubreuilville, a lumberjack village of 900 his grandparents helped build in the 1950s, under skies so dark the stars were constant.
The story
We Are All Stardust
In a northern village where boys were expected to finish school and go work at the mill, nobody expected much of him. His family went bankrupt twice before he was grown. Born with cleidocranial dysplasia and living with ADHD, he spent years hiding the parts of himself that were different, because when he showed them, they were used against him. People told him his whole life that space wasn't for him.
He comes from French-Canadian and Acadian roots, and grew up on the motto stamped on the Michaud crest: Ferai ce que dirai, I will do what I say. For years he thought keeping his word meant giving everything away, pouring four cups from a cup that held only one. He had to learn that keeping your word doesn't mean breaking yourself to do it.
The storms kept coming. He lost his grandmother in 2020, and two years later his dad, who adopted him as his own and welcomed him into Anishinaabe family and traditions. Jason is also of Métis descent on his mother's side.
Through Stardust he has reached hundreds of thousands of students who, like him, were told the stars weren't for them. Stardust is about the human side of space: bringing authenticity, healing, and hope with us as a species, so we thrive out there instead of carrying all our hurt along.
Après la tempête revient toujours le beau temps.
After the storm, the good weather always returns.
"I spent too much of my life silenced and hiding who I am. I'm not silent anymore, and I'm done hiding. My dream is a generation who get to be their true, authentic selves, the Stardust Generation. And I carry a promise still: that one day, I'll take my grandmother with me to the stars." — Jason Michaud
