Everybody has a hero and sometimes this hero changes your life for a moment or for always. My hero not only changed my life forever, but for the better. He is my friend, my best friend. He is a very intelligent man and he loves science. His name Mathieu Germain, and with his life experience he has forever changed my life, my thoughts, my behavior, and my activities.

The first time I met Mathieu, I didn't realize how much this guy would change my life. I met him for the first time on September of 1990 at school. He was always found under a big tree at school during break, lunchtime and before school. It was my cousin who presented me to this tall boy with his Mickey Mouse lenses. I just remember the smile of this beautiful person. He gave me the taste for science, and introduced me to the computer world along with philosophy. Before I met this "perfect" boy, I didn't like school, science, or life. He changes me: today I like school, science, and work hard top find the perfect world.

Later, he changed my life again with his determination at school and in Scouts. I introduced him to the scout movement and he became a great scout and a peaceful person when he talked. Never before have I seen a man who could be very serious then laugh with everyone afterwards. When I saw that, I just wanted to do the same thing because it could make me a "perfect" man.

In elementary school, I worked with Mathieu on the first school newspaper. He did most of the work on the newspaper. Later, I worked on La Bande a Marcel, the high school newspaper, I tried to work in the same way as Mathieu because he could write beautiful essays. Also, he didn't make mistakes when he wrote, maybe one or two, and this is what I wanted to do.

Mathieu changed my mind a second time. After I spoke with this superb friend, all my activities changed. I began to do things in the community; church; school; newspaper; science club; and in my family, some work in the house. He introduced me to "Genie en Herbe", which is a competition between school about history, math, science, sports, movies, language, geography. I'm just very happy when I can beat Mathieu in "Genie en Herbe" or in school because he is so "perfect" and most of the time he beats me.

His father also changed me. He is a science teacher who gave me the courage to do my four science exposition. He helped me a lot with all my science expositions. He gave me some advice and explained me how the exposition worked. He is also in change of the science club at school and he gave much of his time helping students. He helped me a lot in science.

Never do I want to go back to the way I was before this moment of my life; my only wish is that I met Mathieu before September 1990. The last change he did for my life was to give me the courage for this year and if I had never met Mathieu, you probably would never see me here. Mathieu is not only a friend he is my brother.