Canada's first woman astronaut, a Ukrainian, gives environmental focus to "Global Spirit" (09/05/99)

Canada's first woman astronaut, a Ukrainian, gives environmental focus to "Global Spirit"

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - The organizers of the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation's convention made many inspired choices in gathering its list of panelists and participants.

However, before they asked Dr. Roberta Lynn Bondar, the first Canadian woman in space, to be their keynote speaker - a perfect selection for a gathering whose slogan was "Catch the Global Spirit" - they must have wondered whether they should also automatically present her with an award for personal achievement. Her curriculum vitae is humbling, if not mind-numbing.

Dr. Bondar was born December 4, 1945, in Sault-Ste.-Marie, Ontario. According to the Great Canadian Scientists website, while still a child she dreamed of becoming Flash Gordon and doing battle with Ming the Merciless. She got her private pilot's license while still in high school.

Dr. Bondar earned a doctorate in neurobiology from the University of Toronto in 1974, an M.D. from McMaster University in 1977 and, after a stint at the neuro-ophthalmology unit of the Tuft's New England Medical Center in Boston and the Playfair Neuroscience Unit of Toronto Western Hospital, as well as having completed post-graduate medical training in neurology at the University of Western Ontario in London, she was admitted in 1981 as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada as a specialist in neurology.

Dr. Bondar was one of the six original Canadian astronauts selected in December 1983, while working as an assistant professor of neurology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (1982-1984).

Although she began astronaut training in February 1984, a long waiting period on the ground was standard. Dr. Bondar did not spend the time idly. She conducted research at the Pacific Vascular Institute in Seattle and at Toronto's Sunnybrook Medical Center, among others.

It was not until early 1990 that she was designated for a mission - the first involving the International Microgravity Laboratory. Dr. Bondar flew on the space shuttle Discovery during Mission STS-42 on January 22-30, 1992, and she performed life science and material science experiments in the Spacelab and on the shuttle's middeck.

Since that flight, her efforts exploded. She taught and conducted research as an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico's departments of neurology and biology (1992-1994), was accepted into the faculty of the Center for Advanced Technology Education at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (1992), and served as visiting distinguished fellow, department of medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University (1993-1994); and as a visiting distinguished professor of kinesiology at the University of Western Ontario (1994-1998).

Dr. Bondar conducted research in the U.S. at Boston's Deaconess Hospital, the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Edwards Air Force Base in Texas, and the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

She even excels at hobbies, (she was an honors student in professional nature photography at the Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, Calif.). In 1995 her book "To Touch the Earth," graced with NASA's and her own photography and with a text inspired by her space journey, was published by the Toronto-based Key Porter Books.

In 1997 she was appointed to a special advisory panel by Canada's Minister of Health Allan Rock.

On June 24 Dr. Bondar was accepted as a specially elected fellow into the Royal Society of Canada. According to her citation, as a member of the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Health Sciences, Dr. Bondar conducted pioneering neurological research, for her "unique ability to capture the minds and imaginations of people of all ages," for her tireless promotion of the appreciation of sciences and encouragement of learning and research at all levels, "for expanding opportunities for Canadian scientists to participate in research in space, and for developing international collaboration in life sciences for Canada."

Sault-Ste.-Marie has gone Bondar-happy, renaming a plaza, several schools, resource centers, libraries, scholarships and athletic awards after the astronaut. Towns across the country have followed suit. The province of Ontario renamed its Science and Technology Awards in her honor and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada established a fellowship in her name.

The website of the Roberta Bondar Earth and Space Center Planetarium at Toronto's Seneca College, http://www.senecac.on.ca/bondar/astronauts.html, provides a comprehensive list of her achievements.

Cosmic keynote address

For a woman of learning, Dr. Bondar phrases her credos in disarming fashion. "I think it's very important that when we do stuff," she said, "we don't assume that's the only accomplishment we'll attain in life - there's always something beyond that we can work toward."

The astronaut said the space program is unique in that "there are only about 500 people out of a global population of 5 to 6 billion that have experienced space flight, and yet these individuals were not selected because of their wisdom or their potential to bring back fresh ideas to Earth."

"You're probably aware," the scientist added, "that there has been no great poetry that has come from space flight, or any truly good books - although I did attempt to write one -" written by any of the program's participants.

"Sometimes pure science does not bring that experience back, nor change our lives and our attitudes as perhaps it should," she noted.

Because of the technical experience necessary and the emphasis of the pre-flight training, Dr. Bondar said that, by and large, "people who go up lack the kind of mind that might embark on a path of deeper understanding."

To compound this problem, the shuttle scientist said: "Everything flashes by very quickly, 90 minutes around the Earth means 9 kilometers per second, few colors are visible, and it is very difficult to recognize specific features on the ground."

Dr. Bondar said the primary thing she gained was a certainty that the environment is non-negotiable. Her focus on the fragility and uniqueness of Earth's beauty amidst the vastness of space is common among former astronauts. However, the Sault-Ste.-Marie native suggested that, for the most part, astronauts have come down the same as they went up - perhaps with convictions more strongly entrenched.

Jokingly, the astronaut said there are two myths about the space program she wanted to dispel: "No. 1, you can't see the Great Wall of China from up there; No. 2, we don't drink Tang."

Returning to the serious tenor of her talk, Dr. Bondar explained that the 55 experiments she conducted, based on research carried on by 13 countries, concerned human adaptation to space conditions and the methods by which invertebrates, such as insects, and vertebrates, such as humans, function in gravity.

The astronaut commended organizers for having given Roman Kroitor, one of the creators of IMAX systems, an award, since it very closely matches the size and clarity of the film used in both the U.S. and Soviet/Russian space programs.

Dr. Bondar began her slide show with a photo, taken from the Russian MIR Station, of the shuttle Discovery with its bay doors ajar, which to her represents "the opening up of a person's mind."

The astronaut-activist said she has taken leave from her academic duties to embark on a cross-Canada campaign called "Passionate Vision: A Photo Journey," to show people from sea to sea the beauty of their country through photographs she herself has taken.

She was harshly critical of the industrial policies that have left entire ranges denuded of trees, degrading the soil. "There are three things we need: clean water, clean air, and trees and plant life," Dr. Bondar said. "We cannot eat soil, [trees] can. We need them to keep the cycle of nutrients going, otherwise we will starve as a species."

"We've developed technologies to get us into space, and this enables us to view things from a wiser perspective, and yet we've developed technologies that can do us in," the activist said.

"One thing you feel very starkly when you're in space is that the Earth is all we have - there are just billions of stars, and nothing else," she added.

Dr. Bondar showed examples of her stunning images of rugged mountains, lush temperate rainforests, resplendent fall colors, and close-ups of fauna, such as porcupines, and flora, such as caribou mosses and ferns.

Dr. Bondar then turned to shuttle-eye-view shots, contrasting the look of protected wildernesses such as the Pacific Rim National Park, the Banff, Yoho and Jasper national parks, the wilderness around Lake Huron's Georgian Bay and the St. Lawrence Islands Provincial Park with the stark white patches of logged terrain, as well as the relatively denuded urban environs of Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal and her native city.

The astronaut said, "in the shuttle's photographs, places taken up by cities and suburbs look like someone has taken a razor to velvet and shorn away all the pile."

Dr. Bondar said she is driven by a sense of responsibility that falls to her as an explorer to convey the issues facing humans as inhabitants of the planet. She also said she feels duty-bound to people in Canada who don't get a chance to see first-hand both the richness of its natural inheritance and what is being done to it.

As someone who immersed herself in science, she said it was time for her to assist in prompting "society [to] ride a pendulum swing away from the culture of technology in order to attain some balance."

She said that taking her message to corporations has been very important. "They've been treating me with a lot of respect, for a hippie," she quipped. "For me, education is the thing. Children are very important, but education shouldn't stop with childhood," Dr. Bondar added.

During the question and answer session, she conceded she hadn't been aware that she was the second Ukrainian woman in space, after the Soviet cosmonaut Valentyna Tereshkova, and said she still looks forward to visiting Ukraine.

Prompted by the editor of Forum magazine, Andrew Gregorovich, the astronaut said she would make a point of trying to meet the Moscow-based Ukrainian former cosmonaut Pavlo Popovych at one of the annual meetings of the International Association of Space Explorers, which brings together the elite club of space flight veterans.

Dr. Bondar pointed out with determined humor that, while there are vast differences in technological level between the U.S. and Russian space programs, "there are still many Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts who don't take women as seriously as they should."

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