Within the span of just two years, actor Michael J Fox has won the highest civilian honour of both the United States and his home country of Canada.
It’s a feat that’s been managed only three times before, and only twice before by a Canadian.
In a Rideau Hall ceremony on Friday, Fox was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest tier of Canada’s top civilian award.
The ceremony came just 21 months after a similar investiture at the White House, where Fox was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ own top non-military decoration.
Born in Edmonton in 1961, Fox is best known for his 1980s acting career, including starring roles in Family Ties and the Back to the Future trilogy.
But what was primarily cited in both Fox’s White House and Rideau Hall investitures was his more than three decades of advocacy for research into Parkinson’s, a degenerative illness for which Fox is one of the world’s most well-known patients.
“Michael J. Fox is in a remarkable chapter of his life, blending selective acting with powerful global advocacy and unflinching honesty about Parkinson’s,” reads a bio of Fox published by Rideau Hall.
When awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Joe Biden in January 2025, a White House statement similarly cited Fox for “channeling his endearing personality to advance treatments that move us closer to a cure and remind us of the power of American possibilities.”
Fox first started noticing symptoms of Parkinson’s in 1990, when he was just 29. The Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Foundation, founded by the actor in 2000, has now raised an estimated US$3 billion for Parkinson’s research .
Fox becomes just the third Canadian to win the top non-military decorations of both his home country and that of the United States.
The other two are Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry and Saturday Night Live founder Lorne Michaels.
Gehry, who died in 2025, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2016. He’d been made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2003 by Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson.
Lorne Michaels also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2016. He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada two years later, in 2018.
Gehry also won the top civilian decoration of France, the Légion d’honneur, achieving the decoration’s third-highest rank of Commandeur.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the top tier of the Order of Canada have also been awarded to two figures who weren’t citizens of either the United States or Canada: South African president Nelson Mandel, and Czech statesman Vaclav Havel.
Although the top U.S. honour is more famous, the top Canadian honour is slightly more exclusive.
While more than 8,000 people have been inaugurated as “members” or “officers” of the Order of Canada, the top level of “companion” is reserved to only 180 living people at any one time and has been awarded fewer than 500 times since its creation in 1967.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom doesn’t have a ceiling for total living recipients and has been awarded more than 650 times since its creation in 1962.
Whenever Canadians win foreign honours, it’s usually France’s Légion d’honneur, a civilian decoration whose lower tiers are handed out more liberally than most national awards.
Right now, for instance, any Canadian who assisted in the liberation of France during the Second World War is eligible for a Légion d’honneur – and the award was similarly extended to Canadian service members who served in France during the First World War.
In 2007, former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis (who was named a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2003) became the first Canadian to win the highest civilian decoration of Lesotho, the Knight Commander of the Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe.
Although Companion of the Order of Canada is the highest civilian award Canadians can receive from their own government, there is technically one higher decoration that they can receive as citizens of the Commonwealth.
That would be the Order of Merit, a decoration handed out under the personal discretion of the British sovereign and limited to 24 living recipients at any one time.
Only one Canadian has ever received it: former prime minister Jean Chretien, in 2009.
