Major (ret’d) Marc Dauphin was born in Montreal. He attended high school and CEGEP at Le Petit Séminaire de Québec(now Le Collège François de Laval), and studied medicine at the Université Laval in Québec City. In 1972, while in med school Marc signed up with the Canadian Forces. After graduating, he served in Esquimalt BC, then in Lahr Germany. During his service, Marc became a Flight Surgeon (1977) and studied Tropical Medicine at Walter Reed (Washington DC, 1978). Upon completing his military service, he practiced family medicine in Mont-Joli. Preferring emergency medicine, he moved to Rimouski where he worked in the ER and the ICU for eleven years. Moving to Sherbrooke in 1991, he practiced ER medicine there. Marc taught emergency medicine at both Laval and Sherbrooke Universities. He was also a coroner for 12 years.
It was in 2007, at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the CF approached Marc to serve in Germany, as a reservist, at the US Armed Forces Role 4 hospital in Landstuhl where all Canadian and U.S. casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan were stabilized before being air-evacuated to North America. Concurrent to this mission, Marc Dauphin also suddenly took on the added responsibilities of being the Officer Commanding the medical clinic at Geilenkirchen, 300 Km to the north. That six-month mission turned into almost a year. For this, Marc was awarded the Chief of Defence Staff Commendation.
It was upon returning to Canada that the CF once more approached him, this time to take on the responsibility of being the last Canadian Officer Commanding the Role 3 NATO facility in Kandahar, Afghanistan. This Marc did, from April to October 2009, during a period where all records for numbers and severity of casualties were broken, mainly due to the “Obama Surge” in troop numbers. For a few months, the hospital became the busiest trauma center in the world. For this mission, Marc was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal which he received from the hands of the Governor General, His Excellency, the Right Honourable David Johnston, in 2011.
From 2010 to 2012, Major Dauphin was Base Surgeon at the 41stCF Health Services Clinic, in St-Jean, Montreal, St-Hubert and Farnham. During this period, he appeared as a spokesperson for the CF in multiple media, printed, radio and video, both in Canada and around the world. From September 2012 to February 2013, Marc was the Regional Surgeon for Quebec, responsible for all medical care to CF members in Quebec.
Marc Dauphin retired from the CF in February 2013 at 60. He is both a published author (L’anneau de Gabriele, Les Éditions Libre Expression, Montreal, 1998) and an artist (oil painting).
In 2013, Marc also published, to wide acclaim, Combat Doctor (Dundurn, Toronto), a memoir about his experiences in Afghanistan. Its translation, Médecin de guerre, was published in Montreal (Les Éditions de l’Homme) in October 2014. With his wife Christine, Marc Dauphin is busy writing a seven book series of novels about a German family throughout the XXth Century. The series, called Plus jamais la guerre is currently well received. Book 1, L’anneau is a re-publication in condensed form of L’anneau de Gabriele. It was published in September 2016 at Les Éditions Véritas, Montreal. Book 2 (Le rendez-vous) quickly followed in October, and Book 3 (La lettre), in February 2017. Plus, many other books in which he either wrote the foreword or participated significantly. In 2026, Marc’s English translation of L’Anneau (The Lost Ring) will be published in Cambridge, UK (Vanguard Press, a subdivision of Pegasus, Elliot Mackenzie Publishers Ltd.).
Marc Dauphin earned the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM), The NATO Special Service Medal with two bars, the General Campaign Star, the Canadian Forces Decoration with two bars (CD2), Queen Elizabeth the Second’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, The King Charles III Coronation Medal, and a Chief of Defense Staff Commendation (2010).
As a civilian, in 2012, he won the Mérite estrien, Sherbrooke, as an outstanding Eastern Townshipper. And in 2014, he won the prestigious La Gloire de l’Escolle medal awarded by Laval University for his career achievements. In 2016, Marc was awarded the Grand Prix d’humanité from Le Collège des médecins du Québec (The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Quebec) for his part in the care of civilian victims in Afghanistan.
In the fall of 2014, Marc accepted the Conservative Party’s request that he run in the 2015 federal election as a candidate in the Sherbrooke riding. Fortunately (says he), he lost. Marc is President of Royal Canadian Legion Branch HMCS Coaticook, Quebec #026 as well as its Service Officer and non-denominational chaplain.
Marc is a founding member and was, for a number of years VP of Medical Intelligence CBRNE Inc. (MEDINT CBRNE Group) ® , an intelligence firm that deals with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, and to conduct scientific research and development which include a small component of editing and translation. The firm aims to provide intelligence and training for civilian and police organisations as well as to the CAF.
Marc is a founding member of OP Buddy Check, that became Operation Compagnons D’Armes ® , a non-profit organization dedicated to helping and caring for homeless veterans, and now has expanded on providing care to other populations and conventional clinical research. The organization has addressed to politicians and the Chief Defence Staff several topics as part of special projects, and created a project on survival kit for homeless veterans. He is also on the board of a number of volunteer organizations for veterans in both Quebec and Ontario.
With his wife Christine, Marc founded Les communications du dauphin, which gives lectures, writes books, and works with documentary producers. He still gives a few lectures a year on resilience, suicide prevention, and his experience in Afghanistan. The audiences have been as varied as Engineering Firms, Sherbrooke Police’s SWAT Team, to Longueuil Police, the RCMP, Quebec Provincial Police, the Association des Médecins francophones du Canada, medical students, Emergency Care Residents, University teachers, the US VA, Paramedics’ Associations, and military units.
Marc also participated in the production of the TV series Combat Hospital (2011) which was based on his experiences as Officer Commanding the Role 3 Hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The fictional hospital’s Commander, Colonel Xavier Marks is largely inspired by the real Marc Dauphin.
Since 2008, Marc regularly appears on many Quebec French language media (written, TV, Radio, films and TV series), plus many Canadian anglophone media, and has appeared internationally on many of the main US and Australian media, and even on Dutch, French and Danish media. He is the subject of a series of documentaries shown on Australian Broadcasting Corp about PTSD, in 2013-14.
He was the History chronicler on the “Des vets le soir” blog from 2021 to 2024.
Christine and Marc have been married for 49 years, and happily live in Coaticook, Québec. They have two adult sons and two grandchildren.
Marc is fluently bilingual and bicultural in addition to getting around in German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian. He is a History buff, a lover of astronomy and nuclear physics, and an artist of little talent but dogged persistance.