Marc Garneau and Roberta Bondar are two Canadian wayfarers who, as crew members aboard United States space-shuttle missions, were literally the first two Canadians to journey right out of this world. Captain Garneau flew in the shuttle craft Challenger in 1984; Dr. Roberta Bondar, in the Discovery in 1992. That these two Canadian astronauts shared in American space adventures was not surprising, given important links between research endeavours in both countries. Above all, Canadian aeronautical research designed and produced the “Canadarm,” a complex, computerized device “... mounted on shuttles, which would set out or retrieve telecommunications satellites in space – or, in time, repair them in their orbits far above the Earth.”
 

Canada's original space team, December 1983,  included top row from left: Ken Money, Roberta Bondar, Bjarni Tryggvason, and bottom row: Steve MacLean, Robert Thirsk, and Marc Garneau. Thirsk, a medical doctor and engineer, embarked on the longest space shuttle flight in history aboard the Columbia on June 20, 1996. While in space he studied the effects of low-level gravity on living organisms. [Photo, courtesy National Research Council]

Canada’s role in space has stayed both valuable and continuing. Garneau and Bondar, as the first two of a group of Canadian astronauts carefully selected and trained for space missions, were followed by “back-up” comrades including Ottawa-born Steve MacLean, whose mission STS-52 took place October 22 - November 1, 1992 and Chris Hadfield of Milton, Ontario, whose November 1995 voyage into space was aboard the Atlantis. The same, indeed, was true of American astronauts themselves, where a number of equally ready and able candidates for shuttle flights were left on standby, perhaps never to take that breathtaking skyward leap. But Garneau and Bondar were the very first Canadians to join that special group of human beings who actually left this planet, wayfared into the immensities beyond, and successfully returned.

Marc Garneau, born at Quebec City in 1949 and fluently bilingual, graduated from Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean in 1968, then from Royal Military College in 1970. In 1973, he earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of London, England. Joining the Canadian naval forces, he first served as a combat systems officer. In Halifax where he was a weapons instructor, he designed a simulator for training officers in missile systems. Chosen as a member of the first Canadian astronaut team in late 1983, he took on duties with the space program at the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa, and then, in October 1984, was selected to fly aboard the Challenger out of Cape Kennedy in Florida. On his eight-day voyage beyond the Earth, Garneau carried out experiments in space science that dealt both with a “space vision system” developed by the NRC and also with problems of living in space – notably with nausea more troublesome than “sea” sickness! Continuing in the astronaut program on his return, Marc Garneau retired from the navy in 1989 and as Canada’s pioneer astronaut, returned to space aboard Endeavour in May 1996, becoming the first Canadian to fly aboard the space shuttle twice.
 

Chris Hadfield, addressing Spar Aerospace employees in Brampton, Ontario, following the STS-74 mission aboard Atlantis.  He was the first Canadian to fly as Mission Specialist, the first Canadian to board the Russian Space Station Mir, and the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm in space.  [Photo, courtesy Spar Aerospace Limited]

Roberta Bondar, first Canadian woman in space, was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1945, took a bachelor’s degree in science at the University of Guelph in 1968, a master’s degree at the University of Western Ontario in 1971, and a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 1974. She branched from Zoology into neurobiology and medicine, joining the medical faculty of McMaster University. She also taught at the University of Ottawa from 1985-89. On becoming Chairman of the Life Science Committee for Space Stations at the NRC, she took flight surgeon’s training, then went to the Sunnybrook Medical Centre in Toronto. Also chosen as an astronaut, after repeated delays that included the tragic loss of the Challenger and all on board in 1986, she took off, at last, in January 1992 aboard the Discovery. Roberta Bondar did crucial work on weightlessness in space. No less enthusiastic since her return to earth, she has taught at universities from Hamilton to New Mexico where she has demonstrated her pride in Canada's space program.

J.M.S. Careless