Northstar & Aurora (Alpha Flight)

Jean-Paul Beaubier was an infant when his parents were killed in a car crash. He was soon adopted by a family named Martin and separated from his twin Jeanne-Marie. When Jean-Paul was six years old history repeated itself, as the Martins too died in an accident and the boy was brought to a foster home. Jean-Paul led a rather lonely childhood, often getting into trouble. As a teen, he attempted to steal from a man named Raymonde Belmonde, who was himself involved in shady dealings. Belmonde helped the young Jean-Paul deal with his emerging super-human powers and perhaps with his homosexuality as well.

Jean-Paul eventually left Belmonde and joined a circus in France as an acrobat. Always fiercely nationalistic, Jean-Paul returned to Quebec and joined a radical Separatist movement called "Front de Libération du Québec." However, he discovered their terrorist activities and left the group after stopping a bomb on a bus, with no official recognition that he was ever a member. Jean-Paul then decided to turn his passion for skiing into a career, and with his powers of speed quickly became a champion at the Olympic Games.

Alpha Flight
After gaining notoriety as a sport star, he was contacted by James MacDonald Hudson, who had already met Beaubier's twin Jeanne-Marie. Jean-Paul was intrigued to meet the sister he never knew and joined Department H as Alpha Flight's "Northstar." He was present when Alpha Flight first fought the X-Men in Calgary in an attempt to reclaim Wolverine, who had once been Department H's "Weapon X."

Unfortunately, Jean-Paul's abrasive personality made staying a member of Alpha Flight difficult. He was increasingly disdainful of Jeanne-Marie's relationship with Sasquatch (an attitude which may actually have been jealousy), and eventually left the team after a fight with his sister over an implied insult to her propriety. (Aurora then had Sasquatch manipulate her powers so that she was no longer identical to her brother.) While he was not officially a member at the time, Northstar later joined Alpha Flight when Loki's Fire Fountain opened in Ungava Bay, Canada, because Aurora was suffering from a bout with her schizophrenia at the time. When Phoenix attacked Alpha Flight, blaming them for a psychic distress call she received from her father (Cyclops), Northstar chose Rogue as a target. Rogue kissed Northstar to drain his powers, and immediately became privy to all Jean-Paul's secrets, presumably including his sexual orientation. Interestingly enough, during the ensuing encounter with the Fire Fountain and the people transformed by it, Northstar agreed to touch Rogue's skin to see if Anodyne had cured her.

Later, Northstar was forced to rejoin Alpha Flight at the Eye of the World when Talisman issued a mystic summons for help in their efforts to free Sasquatch's soul from the realm of the Great Beasts. Upset at being manipulated, he almost left immediately, but Snowbird used her powers to force him to stay. With Northstar's help, Alpha Flight managed to rescue Walter's soul, though Sasquatch's body was destroyed and his soul was now trapped in the box armor.

It was not long before Sasquatch tried to regain a more human form, which led him to locate a humanoid body in another dimension. Unfortunately it turned out to be the Hulk, and Sasquatch refused to displace his former colleague and friend, so his soul again was lost. When Alpha Flight responded to calls to put down the returned (and rampaging) Hulk, Northstar and Aurora tried to use their gestalt light powers, but instead their touch shorted each other's powers out, due to the genetic changes Sasquatch had performed on Aurora.

Northstar stayed with the reconstituted Alpha Flight for quite some time after that. Eventually his past as a terrorist was revealed to all (though Alpha had known for some time) when his former commander began killing off his subordinates and Jean-Paul was forced to save them. Fortunately, because he took part only in very limited terrorist activities, none of them murderous, Northstar was pardoned by the Canadian government.

Shortly thereafter, Jean-Paul took up skiing again as a means of distancing himself from Aurora's new relationship with Roger Bochs. His secret identity was inadvertently revealed to the world when he rescued a skier who had been accidentally mind-controlled by Kara Killgrave. Because Northstar could not prove that he never used his powers in competition, he was stripped of his medals from his amateur career. Meanwhile, Kara Killgrave tracked Jean-Paul down and apologized, but then succumbed to her fantasies and "persuaded" Northstar to be her boyfriend and take her to a remote island. While Jean-Paul swam in the ocean, Kilgrave's pheromones washed off and he grew very angry with her, so she returned them both to Alpha Flight.

Born in Canada, Jeanne-Marie and her twin brother, Jean-Paul, were separated in infancy after their parents died in a car accident which caused them both to grow u