A few days ago I was travelling through the Saskatchewan Prairies and listening to an audiobook about Elon Musk. This man, known all across the world for … actually for many great and unbelievable things, to me, was mainly associated with the U.S. and Silicon Valley.
Can you imagine how surprised I was when I learned his grandfather Joshua Haldeman – a political economist, provincial and national professional leader and sportsman/adventurer, man's man who broke horses and organized one of Canada's first rodeos, who later flew his little plane from South Africa to Australia – moved to Herbert from Minnesota in 1907? He was a farmer, but the farm didn't survive the Great Depression, and then he turned to his other profession and became a successful chiropractor with 15 years of established practice in Regina.
He met a Moose Jaw girl Winnifred Josephine Fletcher while studying in college in the Friendly City. They had five kids including Maye, Musk's mother, who was born in Regina.
Before the book, I never really looked into Musk's biography and didn't know anything about his connection to Canada. It was pretty cool to know that he had a connection in the area, but that wasn't it for surprises for that day. While I was driving through the Swift Current area the book reached the part about Musk's personal experience in Canada, which started in Montreal but pretty soon brought him to Saskatchewan in search of family members.
I was excited to learn that his pretty intriguing and interesting family had roots in Saskatchewan. So when I learned that before revolutionizing the global payment system, planning on occupying Mars and building electric cars, the 17-year-old Musk obtained Canadian citizenship and for some time could be found doing chores on his cousin's farm by Waldeck, a village east of Swift Current. All of a sudden I felt really thrilled (I know it's silly, but I was driving through the area and almost felt like I connected with the history and got to know Musk better).
Even though Musk's time in Saskatchewan didn't last very long, he got to celebrate his 18th birthday at the farm here while waiting for his mother and siblings to complete their paperwork and come to Canada from Pretoria, South Africa. (Musk was born and raised there after his grandfather moved his family there from Saskatchewan in 1950.)
Once the family arrived, they moved to Ontario where Musk enrolled at Queen's University in Kingston. In a few years, he transferred to Pennsylvania, finishing his Canadian chapter.
I was interested in learning more about a man who changed so much in the world as I know it, but this small connection to Saskatchewan heated up my interest even more. So I looked more into Musk's family, and it seemed that this brightness was in their genes. The way grandfather Haldeman was raising their children also had an impact. In an interview with Regina Leader-Post, Musk's uncle Scott said that his father firmly believed that there was nothing a Haldeman couldn't do.
It seemed that Musk grew up with the same motto inside. Despite all the failures and hard times, he went through building the technological empire and attaining things that are usually done by states, he kept moving forward while keeping focus on his goals.
Today Musk, the CEO of Tesla, the man behind SpaceX, the private commercial company flying to space, is a very rich entrepreneur who started many projects all but in back rooms and pushed for his dreams despite everything. What makes him special? He has the potential to change history. He is a visionary, who sees broader and bigger than most people in the world. He starts his projects and builds businesses not to get rich or solve one particular problem, but to change the way things are and he proves that nothing is impossible.
He started dreaming about alternative energy since the early years. By the time he came closer to building an electric car, these types of vehicles (which existed mainly in the shops of techno-geeks) were usually pretty ugly, had a short battery life and weren't convenient. Today's Tesla is a smart and convenient beauty that knows what you need better than you do.
Musk's space ideas and experiments failed many times, but he believed it was possible, and now SpaceX serves its original mission making transportation to space cheaper (if you can use this word when we still talk about millions of dollars per trip) and working towards the colonization of Mars. It still sounds like something unreal, but keeping in mind Musk's other achievements, his temper and consistency I tend to believe that he'll get what he wants, changing the world even more.
His ability to learn and his curiosity is something that impresses as well. His hands-on approach and knowledge help him push and develop his products to perfection. His solid self-belief is something that fascinates along with his intellectual capacities.
He might have a lot of minuses as well, and not all his projects are completed or developed to capacity, but his ability to see the world from a different perspective and change it, paying attention to details is something that makes him unique.
