“Space… the final frontier.”
Before there was warp drive, before there was the Enterprise, before millions of fans around the world heard the words “Beam me up, Scotty” …
A Canadian lieutenant was on a watercraft in the English Channel trying his best to hold onto his lunch.
He had just left England behind to be part of the largest amphibious military landing in history.
As it made landfall on the French coast along a beach generals would name Juno, the gangplank went down, as bullets whizzed by the heads of the men disembarking.
It was chaos, the Canadian radio operator had no time to think beyond the mission he had to accomplish, and nothing was going to stop him.
By the end of the day, he had killed two men, lost a finger and cheated death.
When the war ended the man with a gift for voices, had absolutely no idea he was about to become one of the most recognizable engineers in television history.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx!
This month I continue to feature great actors who left their mark on film and TV.
Today we’re tracing the incredible journey from battlefield survivor to cultural icon This is the story of…James Doohan!
Long before Montgomery Scott was keeping the warp drive functioning on the USS Enterprise, another Montgomery Scott was sailing Earth’s oceans.
He had a thirst for adventure, and he had joined the Royal Navy at 16 years old and eventually worked his way up to becoming a captain.
He was often away from home for half a year and somehow found the will and time to have 25, yes…25, children with two wives.
He was 70 years old when he had a daughter named Sarah Frances Montgomery.
She grew up very religious and became involved with the Presbyterian Church, then the Salvation Army, before she found Catholicism.
And through the Catholic Church she met William Patrick Doohan.
William had been trying to live up to his father’s expectations,
They were big shoes to fill because Thomas Doohan was the chief constable of Belfast.
William was hoping to impress him, and he became a pharmacist, dentist and veterinarian.
When the First World War began, he became something else…. A soldier.
William did this for two reasons, one he wanted to put as much distance between him and his overbearing and abusive father as he could.
The second? Soldiers had private drinking clubs and William was an alcoholic.
He was denied service in the Irish Militia because the government wanted him to remain a civilian.
During this time William married Sarah Frances Montgomery and soon two children followed.
They were named William and Thomas.
By the end of the war, the family looked for a new home because Ireland was not the place for them anymore. William wanted to go to South Africa, while Sarah wanted to move to Canada.
Sarah won, and the family boarded a ship and embarked on their journey to Canada in late-December 1919.
Joining them on the trip would be James Doohan, who was yet unborn.
The family landed in Halifax on Jan. 1, 1920, and then they journeyed on a train across the country to Vancouver.
He later said the journey in utero influenced his love for ships and train because James Montgomery Doohan was born on March 3, 1920.
After a few years in Vancouver, the family moved to Sarnia, Ontario.
His father worked at a laboratory looking to find a way to separate oil from tar sands, but unfortunately that breakthrough would be decades in the future.
Regardless of how well William provided for the family, James didn’t have a happy home life.
Remember, William was an alcoholic and despite the move from Ireland to Canada, he never stopped drinking.
His father often left the home angry by some perceived slight and would return by midnight rageful, drunk and screaming.
His older brothers escaped his father’s abuse; they were almost adults and could defend themselves His sister Margaret was often sick and frail and thus never a target.
That left the young James, who felt very small and alone in that house.
In his autobiography, beam me Up Scotty he shared a time when William came home drunk and accused James who was just eight at the time of stealing money from church.
William then beat him up with a horsewhip until Sarah screamed for him to stop, but by then James’ back was so bloody and cut that even a tender touch from his mother caused him to scream in pain.
It was a confusing time for the young boy because as much as his father was a mean drunk, he could be deeply caring.
When James was around nine years old, he contracted diphtheria. He was delirious with a fever and sweating through his clothes and bed sheets and had to be quarantined.
Because of this, William was forced out of the house so he could continue working but the entire time he brought James toys and other gifts.
James wrote.
“How tragic, really, that it took a near-fatal disease to bring out the parental concern of my father. In a way, though, he did lose me, but it was his personality, not any disease, that drove us apart.”
I wonder if one of those toys was a train set.
James had been born with a passion for them. Except he didn’t care so much for watching them run, instead, he wanted to know how they worked.
James also said he was born with a good ear for accents.
Growing up he would pick them up and walk around the house mimicking those he heard around Sarnia. His father was shocked to hear James speak in a perfect Cockney accent and wondered where his son had picked it up.
His incredible gift for sound also made him a talented singer.
Before long James was acting in school productions and developed a love for the stage because it gave him confidence and above all else… popular.
It was also a place to escape the overwhelming loneliness he felt at his unhappy home.
James described it as walking barefoot on a bed of tacks.
He had to make sure he never did anything to set his father off.
That pressure was suffocating and as he got older, he began to look for a more permanent escape.
That happened on Sept. 10, 1939, when Canada declared war on Germany.
James Doohan would be running away….to the front lines.
James Doohan wasted no time in joining the fight against Germany His army number was A17111, which meant he was the 11th person to join up in Military district #1.
Despite the fact he was going to war, James felt relief and he also, wanted to do his part to defeat Hitler.
But before he left, he went to his brother Bill’s wedding.
He wouldn’t never miss it, after all he was the best man.
As a gift Bill gave him a silver cigarette case and James would take it with him to Europe
He hoped it would bring him good luck.
He would be right.
But first he had to make it through basic training, and six weeks after he enlisted, he was discussing with other recruits that the war wouldn’t last long. They thought that the combined power of England, France, Canada and other Allied nations would quickly push the Nazis back and force Hitler to negotiate peace. He said years later,
“How could I know that I was signing away the next six years of my life? If I had to do it all over again, I’d do the same thing but Good Lord, the enormity of it is so daunting that it was a fortunate thing I wasn’t giving it any thought.”
Private James Doohan was at a military camp along Lake Huron where he was told to transcribe the entire newspaper, every day, into Morse code.
He could do 45 words a minute and earned a spot in the signal division of the artillery.
His proficiency fast tracked him to Europe, and he boarded a train to Halifax, followed by a nine-day journey across the Atlantic to Liverpool, England.
By now James had realized something about army life.
It was boring.
The only excitement came from seeing planes approaching the convoy, which he believed to be German fighters that would relay their position to U-Boats.
In reality they were Allied planes and the boredom continued.
Upon his arrival in England, training continued and James found diversions wherever he could.
At the same time, the war was turning into a long and drawn-out affair.
France, Belgium and the Netherlands fell to Germany, and the British were pushed back to the island after the evacuation from Dunkirk.
Allied forces were being tested just as thousands of Canadian troops amassed in England to await a push into Europe to fight.
James had been recommended for the Officers Training School, and he couldn’t have been happier.
He would be one of 500 candidates to be tested for their psychological aptitude and general knowledge and psychiatric.
Of the 60 selected, James had one of the highest scores.
As an officer in training, he went through six months of training, where he learned everything from firing artillery to driving a tank.
When he finished, he was promoted to lieutenant and was assigned as the aide-de-camp to the Second Corps general.
However, James was bored soon after, so he asked for a transfer.
He was sent to the 13th Field Regiment, a tight force from Regina, Calgary and Edmonton.
Once he arrived, he was immediately challenged by the men.
Gaining their respect would be tough. and gaining the respect of the men was a challenge.
The men knew each other from home, some were family friends, so whenever James gave an order, they would often go over him to higher ranking officers they knew and have his orders reversed.
He complained to the colonel, and he was sent to a new regiment where the same thing happened.
James didn’t want to ask for another transfer, so he took matters into his own hands. Remember, James was an excellent soldier. He had gone through special training and graduated at the top of his class.
So, one night while the regiment slept, he snuck past camp guards to put tape over the tank’s periscope.
The next morning, he assigned one soldier that had been particularly insubordinate tank training.
The soldier, who was named Corrigan, climbed inside.
James asked if he was ready, to which Corrigan arrogantly replied that he was.
James asked him to take a hard left.
Corrigan hesitated. He couldn’t see.
If he had inspected the tank as he should’ve, he would’ve discovered the tape over the periscope and because he hadn’t, James was going to teach him a lesson.
He forced Corrigan to blindly drive the take while James gave him directions.
That included navigating through morning traffic.
This went on for four hours.
Then, James ordered the tank to stop while he took a nap and made Corrigan wait.
When he was ready James easily drove the tank back to the base blind while following Corrigan’s instruction.
It was an impressive feat and upon his return he reprimanded the guards he had snuck past the night before for good measure.
From then on, the men fell in line.
Which is a good thing because together they would be facing the largest seaborne invasion in history.
When James enlisted to fight in the Second World War, he did it in part to escape his alcoholic and abusive father.
He thrived as a recruit and now had gained the respect of his men.
But… he had yet to see action.
He had mostly been bored.
That would soon come to an end because his first sight of combat wasn’t a skirmish on a farmers field.
Instead, in early June 1944 James was on an airfield looking at 10,000 Canadian troops in front of him.
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery walked down to inspect them, as James yelled for them to stand at attention.
Every soldier snapped to his command and Montgomery commented he had a good voice.
For James it was one of the greatest moments of his life.
The men then boarded a ship and waited in the English Channel for word.
Meanwhile, James played craps and won $5,000.
As the hours ticked by, it dawned on him that there was a good chance he would never get to spend that money.
He said,
“Each minute stretched out to an ungodly amount of time, the shore was tantalizingly near. Soon or later, you reach the point where you want to stop thinking about it, anticipating it, you just want to get out there and do the damned job.”
Finally, James and the 33 men under him were given the order.
It was “GO” time on Operation Neptune.
(beat)
They climbed down into a landing assault craft and set off.
In James’ breast pocket was the cigarette case his brother had given him as a gift.
On his hip was a pearl-handled .38 Smith and Wesson.
As the landing craft bounced on the choppy seas, James issued orders to the pilot to ensure they landed safely and avoided German hedgerows.
The pilot ignored most of what James said.
The situation was life or death, and this was no time for insubordination, so James pulled the Smith and Wesson from his hip and pointed it at the pilot’s head.
If he disobeyed him, it would be the last thing he did on this earth.
The pilot followed orders as they neared the beach.
The waves crashed over the men as James saw other boats fall under their power.
He ordered the men to lie down to weigh down the landing craft.
As they successfully made landfall the men poured out of the boat as the Germans unloaded on them.
James hit the beach and thought.
“My god, this is it. It has been five years, and I am in the war. I am in the damned war.”
For James and his men 70 metres into the beach, felt like 700.
Once they finally reached cover, James saw two Germans in a tower and ordered they be taken out.
His man missed so James took the rifle to take the shot.
The first bullet missed. The second took out one German and his third the rest.
“I’d never shot at a living being before, but it was the job. You had to do the job. I swear to you, you never thought of anything other than getting the job done.”
The men then continued on to their position and secured it.
James was just one of 14,000 Canadians on that beach that day.
It would become known as D-Day.
The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations for the Allied victory on the Western Front but the Canadian side often gets ignored in the larger story of that fateful day.
Their landing was given the name of Juno Beach, and because of soldiers like James, Allied forces were able to get their foothold on Normandy.
The Canadians were integral to the inland advance and by nightfall, the battle had come to an end, and James walked back to his command post.
As he stepped around a shell hole, he was knocked off his feet and fell in.
He tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Then he looked down at his hand and saw blood pouring out of his middle finger.
He felt nothing as the adrenaline coursed through him, but the pain would come later.
James got up and went to the regimental aid post for treatment.
The medic bandaged three bullet holes in his middle finger, and asked James about his leg.
James looked down in surprise to see he was bleeding above the left knee. Then he looked down at his shirt and saw another bullet hole in his chest.
No amount of adrenaline would’ve kept him alive. He should be dead.
James couldn’t understand how he was standing He gingerly inspected the shirt expecting the worst and…instead of blood he pulled out the cigarette case his brother had given him. A bullet had hit the case which was just 10 centimetres from his heart.
It was a miracle and something that could’ve been written for the screen.
But it happened to him.
And because of his injuries James was back in England soon after D-Day.
His leg wound healed, but the middle finger could not be salvaged.
James spent the remainder of the war in England, where he attended Elementary Flight Training School, but he never saw combat again.
Although he was able to fly generals and other personnel into Europe once the Allies occupied the area.
Before he knew it, he was faced with the end of the war on V-E Day in May 1945.
James was thrust into the unknown would be returning to Canada, but what was he going to do with his life?
In late-1945, James enrolled in the Veterans Administration School.
He was pursuing chemistry and one night around Christmastime that year, he closed his books and turned on the radio.
It may have been one of the worst radio shows he had ever heard.
James thought he could do a better job so the next day he went down to CFPL, a radio station in London to record himself reading Shakespeare.
When he finished, the technician said he sounded great.
James asked him if he knew what he should do and the tech handed him a brochure for the Academy of Radio Arts had just serendipitously arrived that day at the station.
By the following Monday, James had enrolled in the academy which was run by Lorne Greene.
The Canadian actor would go on to become Ben Cartwright on Bonanza. I covered his life in an episode from 2024, so be sure to check it out.
James was under his tutelage for six months and then got a full scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.
The acting school was founded in 1915 and has since become one of the most influential training grounds for actors in the United States.
Alumni include Christopher Lloyd, Gregory Peck and fellow Canadian Al Waxman.
But before he left, James finally confronted his father.
He had survived the largest seaborne invasion in history, so he was no longer scared of the man that had tormented him for so many years.
For hours James unloaded and raged about how the alcoholism had hurt the family and pushed his children away. His father said nothing, and even though tears streaked his face.
James walked out satisfied.
He never saw his father again.
James Doohan arrived in New York City in 1947.
During the summer, he performed at the Maverick Theatre in Woodstock, New York alongside future Oscar winner Lee Marvin.
With each play he performed with Neighbourhood Playhouse, his confidence grew as he realized he had more to give than accents.
He was still really good at those.
During his second year a man walked in that would change James’ life forever
He was the latest graduate of the n Academy of Radio Arts.
You might recognize his name.
Leslie Nielsen.
James immediately struck up a friendship with the fellow Canadian, who loved a good practical joke.
Nielsen had started his career as a serious actor and would go on to appear in everything from Forbidden Planet to Columbo before uttering the iconic line “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley” in the comedy Airplane! In 1979That’s when the world discovered that Leslie Nielsen was a skilled comedian.
But was never a surprise to his friend James Doohan, “It shocked no one who had put up with his practical jokes back before it was stylish to laugh along with them.”
The two only shared James’ second year at the playhouse because his scholarship would soon come to an end in 1949, and that’s when he made another big life decision.
He got married.
James had met Janet Young while he was enrolled at the playhouse but soon after their wedding he had regrets.
And I’m not exaggerating.
He wrote 10 days into the union they should have annulled it but neither considered it a possibility.
Instead, they remained together and had four children, but James considered the marriage a disaster, so he kept busy with work.
He shuffled constantly between Toronto, Montreal and New York City.
One day he could be playing a waiter on the American television, Somerset Maugham Theater series, the next day he could be Ranger Bill in the Canadian version of Howdy Doody.
At one point, he crossed paths with future co-star William Shatner when they were both cast on the CBC TV show Space Command.
All of this work helped him develop a reputation as a versatile actor because over the course of those first few years, James appeared in approximately 4,000 radio programs and 450 TV episodes n.
In the late-1950s, he took the advice of his friend Leslie Nielsen and moved to Hollywood with his family where his career continued to flourish even as his marriage was falling apart.
James moved into a hotel.
When Leslie found out he insisted that James move in with him and his wife Sandy.
To repay him, James helped him renovate the home and sometimes fellow Canadian Robert Goulet would come over to help as well.
At the time, Leslie was a rising star, while Robert was a few years away from stardom.
While James knocked on the door awaiting his moment in the spotlight.
Or should I say…. beam.
Gene Roddenberry had conceived a new science fiction television series which he described as a western in outer space or as a Wagon Train to the stars.
It was heavily inspired by Jonathan Swift’s highly influential novel Gulliver’s Travels, and he envisioned it as both an adventure shows and a morality tale.
Star Trek would be like nothing else on TV.
Set 300 years in the future, humanity traveled the galaxy with other races in the name of science and understanding.
Earth was a paradise, where poverty, war, disease and many of our modern ills had been vanquished.
Roddenberry saw what humanity could become, if they left their violent ways behind
His show would follow the voyages of the USS Enterprise, on its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations.
to boldly go where no man has gone before!
But when they shot the pilot episode in 1965 one crew member was missing.
Scotty was not in engineering.
It was titled, The Cage, and NBC executives hated it.
For one thing, they didn’t like that the first officer of the ship was played by a woman, Majel Barrett and they also thought it was too slow, too intellectual and too cerebral.
Despite their criticisms, executives saw potential and ordered a second pilot.
The only character kept was Leonard Nimoy’s Spock.
Norway Productions and Desilu Productions, that’s right Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz company produced the series from September 1966 to December 1967.
For this new pilot titled Where No Man Has Gone Before, they introduced new characters.
Dr. McCoy, Sulu and Uhura boarded the Enterprise alongside William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk.
And he wouldn’t be the only Canadian aboard because the role of Scotty, ship’s new Chief Engineer, was James Doohan.
He got the role thanks to his friendship with the episode’s director James Goldstone.
And almost as soon as he was cast, he was given a great deal of input.
Right down to the character’s name which was inspired by his grandfather, he named him Montgomery Scott.
James also told Gene Roddenberry that all the best engineers were Scottish.
He had so much input that he said 99 percent of Scotty was James Doohan and one percent was the accent.
However, his future on the Enterprise wasn’t guaranteed.
After they shot the pilot Gene Roddenberry sent James a letter saying that they wouldn’t need an engineer in the series.
James’ agent made such a fuss that Gene wrote James back into the series.
At first, he was a semi-regular role but soon Scotty was a fan favorite, and he became a full-time member of the cast.
Eventually, he even got to sit in the captain’s chair, if ever briefly.
That’s partly because no one loved the Enterprise as much as Scotty.
James’ character took a paternal attitude to the ship and protected it at all costs even as Captain Kirk brought the ship and crew to the brink of danger week in and week out.
Scotty worked miracles. Need more power to the engines? He found a way.
Klingons attacking and need a boost to the shields; Scotty is on it.
In a sticky situation on a planet? Contact Scotty to get you the hell out of there with the transporter.
So much so that you can still use the phrase “beam me up Scotty” today.
But this might be a Mandela Effect.
That’s when we remember an event differently from how it actually happened.
They’re false memories because while Scotty was on Star Trek no one ever said that phrase on the show.
Characters said, “Scotty beam us up” or “Beam me up”, but never “Beam me up, Scotty”.
Even though it became the title for James Doohan’s autobiography.
Another thing that viewers may not remember is James’ missing finger.
Throughout the run of the show, he hid his wartime injury by pressing buttons with his opposite hand or hiding his hand behind an armload of tribbles.
Star Trek was a revolutionary show, and James Doohan was in for a hell of a ride and be part of the inspiration for our world today.
Martin Cooper was inspired by the communicator in Star Trek to develop a similar device and the cell phone was born.
Siri or Alexa? Heavily influenced by the Enterprise’s computer.
The universal translator? Not just science fiction anymore, you have one in your pocket.
Replicators? We are slowly getting there as 3D printers are a basic version of what they had on the Enterprise.
Scientists have even begun working on transporters and have succeeded in transporting light particles a short distance.
The influence of the show is immense.
And through it all James developed lifelong friendships, and no one was closer to him than George Takei.
The two often went out to dinners together, and James considered him one of his best friends for the rest of his life.
But the two never gelled with William Shatner.
In his autobiography, he said,
“I have to admit; I just don’t like the man.”
And Takei became pretty open about his dislike for Shatner in the press, though he often still adds in compliments of the actor’s talents.
For the show’s third season, NBC planned to move Star Trek to Mondays in hopes of increasing its audience after the enormous letter campaign had surprised the network.
Instead, they moved the show to 10:00 pm on Friday night, which went against its younger audience.
Roddenberry was frustrated, and complained, “If the network wants to kill us, it couldn’t make a better move.
By season 3 William Shatner felt that the main characters had become more compromised or exaggerated and the story lines more improbable by then the show was also hindered by budget cuts.
Nichelle Nichols described it as an intentional effort to kill off Star Trek
Which they did after 79 episodes when NBC canceled the show in February 1969 despite fans’ attempt at another letter-writing campaign.
In 2011, the decision to cancel Star Trek by NBC was ranked number four on the TV Guide Network special, 25 Biggest TV Blunders.
Regardless, James was now out of work.
After Star Trek, roles became rare because he had been typecast as Scotty, and viewers didn’t want to see him as anything else.
After filming two episodes of Daniel Boone in 1969-70, he appeared as a guest star in three other shows in 1971 and two episodes of Marcus Welby. M.D. in 1972.
But he couldn’t break through.
Thankfully, in 1972, the Program Corporation of America sent him a letter and saying they were getting a lot of calls from people who wanted to hear from him.
James hadn’t been on screen as much, but he became hot commodity on stage as audiences jammed auditoriums to hear tales of Star Trek from Scotty
He said,
“If Star Trek was going to constrict my acting career, at least it was giving something back as well.”
The 70s became the leanest years of his career, but those college and university appearances kept the bills paid and his family fed.
James called it a godsend.
Along with speaking tours, James appeared at Star Trek Conventions.
Interacting directly with fans was exhilarating, frustrating and, sometimes, unnerving.
Many gave him letters, or little gifts that he put into a pile to be shipped home.
Some were too big to make the trip.
One woman gave him a five-foot by nine-foot painting of the entire Star Trek cast. James eventually convinced her to donate it to the public library.
Fans asked him questions about how the transporter worked, how antimatter was contained or what powered a phaser.
All he could tell them was that in 300 years, scientists would have figured all that out.
But not all interactions were positive.
At one convention in Boston, a man showed up in full camouflage carrying a weapon asking for James.
In Orlando, one guy found his way onto James’ hotel floor looking for him. Another individual asked James for some of his blood.
He naturally said no.
But what all of these experiences showed was that it was evident people were still interested in Star Trek
So, NBC complied…sort of.
Star Trek: The Animated Series debuted on Sept. 8, 1973, and ran for two seasons on Saturday mornings.
The entire cast was back for the 22-episode run and James’ knack for accents came in handy because he could play multiple roles and get pretty good paycheques.
It was critically acclaimed, and ratings were high but those watching weren’t children who the advertisers were trying to reach. They were adults.
Because of it the show was cancelled in1974, but by then Star Trek’s popularity couldn’t be denied.
The original series had grown massively popular in syndication. in 1972, the Associated Press described it as “the show that won’t die” as the series had been sold in over 150 domestic and 60 international markets.
That prompted Paramount and Roddenberry to begin developing a film in May 1975.
The film was supposed to be the first major Hollywood adaptation of a television series that had been off the air for nearly a decade.
They were hoping to retain its original principal cast, but the actors were anxious about the constant delays and had to accept other acting offers while Roddenberry and the studio worked it out.
As Paramount executives’ interest waned, Roddenberry, backed by fan letters, applied pressure.
On March 28, 1978, Paramount assembled the largest press conference held at the studio since Cecil B. DeMille announced he was making The Ten Commandments to say that Robert Wise would direct Star Trek—The Motion Picture.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened in the United States and Canada on December 7, 1979, in 857 theaters and set a box office record for the highest opening weekend gross.
Roddenberry, Wise, and the entire cast were on hand at the world premiere of the movie a day earlier and it would be the first of many over the next decade because six other movies would be released featuring the original cast.
Some were good, some were bad.
The Wrath of Khan is a masterpiece, and The Final Frontier is a dumpster fire.
But that meant James was getting regular paycheques from the movies, so he took less roles over the 1980s and 1990s.
He appeared as a guest star in shows like Fantasy Island, Danger Bay and MacGyver.
In The Ben Stiller Show, he appeared as himself.
Other times, he was a version of Scotty, like on Bill Nye: The Science Guy.
30 years after the show went off the air, his character was as popular as ever.
He was so beloved that fans wanted him to return to the role and in 1992, he appeared as Scotty on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In the episode titled Relics, the crew of the USS Enterprise-D discover that Scotty had suspended himself for 75 years in a transporter buffer after his ship crashed into a Dyson sphere.
Upon his rescue, Scotty attempts to find his place but feels in the way and a nuisance to those around him.
But in the end his old-fashioned know-how helps save the Enterprise from the same fate that had his crashed ship.
Today, it is considered one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever made and remains one of my favourite episodes of The Next Generation.
James made one more appearance as Scotty in 1994 for the film Star Trek: Generations, which was the first movie to feature the cast of The Next Generation TV series.
Meanwhile, he continued to attend conventions every year.
During this time, he also played Damon Warwick in 20 episodes from 1993 – 97 of The Bold and The Beautiful, and did voice work on shows like Duckman.
But by the early aughts he began to slow down.
He made his final convention appearance in August 2004, during which time he mended the decades-long fractured relationship with his former co-star William Shatner.
On July 20, 2005, James Doohan died in his home due to complications of pulmonary fibrosis.
Three years later, seven grams of his ashes were launched into space on a SpaceLoft XL rocket.
The capsule orbited the earth before it came back down with the ashes still inside.
A year later, private astronaut Richard Garriott smuggled some of James’ ashes to the International Space Station and placed them under the floor of the Columbus module.
In 2012, a small urn containing more of his ashes were flown into space on the Falcon 9 rocket.
And James Doohan didn’t just inspire astronauts.
He inspired the youth to become engineers.
When James heard that a young fan had contemplated suicide, he convinced her to come to his next convention appearance.
She did and he spent several minutes talking to her.
The experience was transformative for her, and she went on to become an electronic engineer.
Then, in 1993, students at the Milwaukee School of Engineering were asked what inspired them About half said Scotty. who they saw as an engineer who wasn’t in the background, doing boring tasks.
He was a hero that a meaningful and important job on the flagship of the United Federation of Planets.
He had a passion for what he did, and that helped fuel that a passion in future generations.
Because of it James Doohan was given an honorary Doctor of Engineering.
In his final public appearance in 2004 when he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, shook hands with Doohan and said,
“From one old engineer to another, thanks mate.”
Not bad for a guy from Sarnia who stormed the beaches on D-Day and then took to the stars to help humanity explore the galaxy.
*sources*
Juno Beach Centre: https://www.junobeach.org/canada-in-wwii/articles/james-doohan/
Star Trek: https://www.startrek.com/en-ca/news/memorial-day-james-doohan-world-war-two
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001150/
Canadian Encyclopedia: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/james-doohan
Beam Me Up, Scotty by James Doohan
Memory Alpha: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/James_Doohan
Valour Canada: https://valourcanada.ca/military-history-library/star-treks-scotty-on-d-day/
