♪ >> Valerie: Welcome to Canada Files .

I'm your new host, Valerie Pringle.

My guest today is a trailblazer in space and an explorer on earth.

Dr. Roberta Bondar was the first female Canadian astronaut.

And the first neurologist in space.

She spent eight days on the space shuttle, Discovery .

Performing more than 40 experiments and taking photographs of our planet from her small window.

She has since travelled the world taking extraordinary images of landscapes and wildlife.

As a doctor, scientist, educator and a photographer, she has spent decades connecting people to that precious planet she saw from her window more than 30 years ago.

>> Doctor Bondar, hello.

>> Hi there.

>> Did being in space change you?

Some astronauts talk about that...being moonstruck.

>> It did but I wanted it to.

I went up there with a very open mind but with my earth values about life, etc.

I must say the extraordinary view out the window was one of the things-- there were a few.

But that was probably the main thing that I felt was such an extraordinary gift.

Down here, we know we're on a planet--- we learn about it in school.

But in space, you actually see the edge of the planet.

You see the black universe beyond with stars that don't twinkle.

Dead light thousands, if not millions of years away from us.

You look at the earth, glowing with the reflected sunlight.

In a futuristic vessel going around the planet.

You're in the past, present and the future all at the same time.

But to see it as a planet is very sobering.

Or should be sobering to any of us.

Because there's nothing out here coming at us except some stuff in the odd meteor and sunlight.

Outside of that, this is what we have.

So it's quite extraordinary that we do things to the planet and to each other that is quite wasteful.

>> There was a quote I read by Edgar Mitchell...of Apollo 14.

He said,"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.

>> That's right.

That's what I thought.

I don't think everybody that goes up feels that way.

I don't think there are a lot of people when they come back, do anything with it.

Because either they go onto the next flight or something in their personal or professional life steers them away from a commitment they might have made to themselves when they do have this view of earth.

I just wanted to keep it.

Keep it close to me.

So I could do something.

>> You wonder who has the ability.

Obviously you've got to be a scientist-- that's how you got there.

There has to be sort of an artistic or poetic temperament in some ways to be able to put it into words and share it with people.

>> One needs, actually contemporary-wise, to look no further than William Shatner.

When he came back from his very short voyage, he wanted to talk about... here's an actor that I'm sure had a script in his head.

But it just went out the window.

When he came back, he was unprepared to look at the blackness of space and the very thin aspect of the atmosphere.

Which was only visible to his eyes because he's a human being.

What we call the visible spectrum.

Because it looks thin because the sun is reflected off it.

That's what he could see.

For him, it was a matter of death--- that we're on the surface of this planet.

There's nothing between us and death.

Because we get too high up, there's no air to breathe.

There's no light.

So he was profoundly affected.

>> He was crying!

>> So when we think about trying to get ourselves emotionally set for a specific situation, how does one cope with seeing either death or life in front of you evolving in an instant?

Whether it's something very bad that ends a life.

Or the birth of a new life.

Sometimes those are things, no matter how tough we think we are and how well-scripted we can be, emotional moments for a human being are very difficult to structure in advance and to carry it off.

>> The story I find incredible is of you as a little girl.

Like really?

You wanted to be in space, collected rockets.

You were obsessed with this!

The chances of you as a little girl in Sault Ste.

Marie at that time getting into space were like zero.

Canadians weren't going.

Girls weren't going.

But you were fascinated by it.

>> I was very fortunate because my parents and my sister, 15 months older than me, were very supportive of all kinds of crazy things.

They were really keen on learning.

For me growing up, it wasn't the fact there wasn't a space program.

There were stars.

As long as there were stars, the possibility was there.

Just because I was a Canadian or the fact that we didn't have rockets!

Or nothing had left the surface of the planet--I'm that old!

That didn't affect my parents' encouragement of me, my reading, learning and understanding.

>> I always find when I've interviewed astronauts over the years, their resumes were so gob-smackingly dense, I think, did you start at five?

You got your pilot's licence, accumulating PhDs.

You spent 18 years at university.

Where were you headed?

>> Most people ask me where I got the money from.

Seriously, at one point for my PhD, I was working three jobs.

To be able to support myself.

I look at my career not as a straight line.

A lot of people want to have this straight path to being an astronaut.

It's more like a pinball machine.

You go bouncing off the surfaces.

You learn one thing, take the energy and go somewhere else.

You give a bit of energy up.

You become different.

You really do evolve.

>> You studied biology, neurology, medicine.

>> It all fits together in retrospect.

My first university degree is a double degree in agriculture and zoology.

People say you don't need that to be an astronaut.

Guess what!

I got picked because I had this broad background in my first degree at university.

Because I had such a diversity of programs that I deliberately took.

When I got into the space program, I thought I could have done another degree.

Engineering might have been very handy.

Then...maybe an MBA.

That would have really been good too.

I started thinking about all the things... the rich value out there, the richness of education.

Of what we can do and become when we learn these things.

It's quite incredible.

>> You heard on the radio that the Canadian Space Agency was looking for astronauts.

Was that like, "Yes...here's where I'm going!"

Was that a moment?

You had your application in, in a nanosecond.

>> I think mine was the second one in.

I think a grandmother beat me there.

Yes, I was driving and I heard this on the radio.

I thought...driving in the car, "How do I find this?"

Trying to figure where.

It didn't say where you applied.

It was just something on the radio.

I'd been following the program in the US for many years.

My grandfather was American.

I have my green card and am very proud of it.

Proud of all these connections.

We spent a lot of time in the States, living in a border town in Ontario.

I followed Sally Ride, all the original women and the space shuttle.

I remember watching it land and saying I am going to do that.

Even if I have to move from here, I'm going to do that!

I was so committed.

Then I heard it on the radio a few months later, "Oh wow!

This is my chance."

>> Your chance among thousands of applicants!

>> Well, I figured I had the right stuff.

Hahahah!

>> Speaking of the right stuff, they did poke, prod, haze.

>> That was such a good movie.

>> ...I was going to ask you if any of the movies really get either the astronaut program or space right.

>> That movie was fantastic and at a time when I needed that movie.

One part of our training was to go on this airplane that did this parabolic loop so we could be weightless at the top They'd pull 2G up and for about 25 seconds at the top you'd have free fall.

Then you'd go down again 2G, pull up 2G.

Can you imagine how sickening this can be?

The smell of oil inside the plane.

So for the novice, which I was, going my first time in this vehicle for training, I was wearing an orange flight suit.

I was sick as a dog because they wanted me to be sick!

They were looking at skin pallor and all kinds of crazy things inside this aircraft.

They wanted to know how motion sickness was affecting it.

It wasn't anything to do with...

I was an astronaut in training but I came out of there thinking I can't do this.

Who likes vomiting?

Who really enjoys that?

That's really bad.

I remember being at this hotel throwing up, even afterwards.

"Oh my gosh, I don't think I can do this".

The movie, The Right Stuff , was on tv.

I flicked the tv on, trying to distract me.

There was the scene where they're walking down in their silver flight suits down the hallway.

I'm going, "Yes!

Those men can do it, I can do it!"

And I never looked back.

I don't like orange but hey.

>> You got to...basically the top of the list.

You're about to go, then the Challenger exploded.

So manned space flights stopped and eight years-- you had to wait another eight years.

>> Tick, tick, tick.

>> It did tick by.

I was on the space shuttle so in those days they were not very long flights.

It was the precursor to the International Space Station.

It couldn't be expected the shuttle would stay up too much longer.

So I said it was a year for every day I was in flight.

I was in flight for eight days, it took eight years of training.

For those eight days.

When I think about the time and how it was spent, a lot of it was trying to reconfigure the reason why I wanted to do this.

>> Which was what?

>> Because I wanted to know what was up there and what the earth looked like.

I felt that the adventure of doing it would somehow make me different.

I was different enough.

Make me view life differently.

The Challenger accide was so sobering.

One of the worst parts for any of us with the loss of human life was watching Christa McAuliffe's parents.

The cameras were right on them.

It was so awful, and dreadful.

I had to think twice-- more than twice, about what I was putting my mother and sister through.

Because my mother was an only child.

My father had died suddenly before the Challenger accident.

I felt this was a very selfish thing for me to be doing.

I was pulling everybody in my slipstream.

Because they supported me but I wasn't really supporting them.

It took that for me to start being more soul-searching about how my goals were really affecting other people.

All of that was very sobering.

that it was something that can happen.

>> Of course.

Yet the pictures of you boarding, you look euphoric.

>> Yes!

It was exciting.

First of all, people in Canada hadn't seen a Canadian fly since the Challenger accident.

So we only had one Canadian who had flown before, a man.

Now the next Canadian flying after the Challenger accident happened to be a woman.

That sent a great message.

Because here was this brave person, who was a woman, taking all this bailout training wearing this orange flight suit with this helmet and heavy pants on.

She's going to do it and she's representing something.

Representing women all around the world and she's with a crew of six men.

To have got that far and achieved what I achieved made me very happy.

I was right at the pinnacle of my training.

The excitement for me was yes, I'm finally going to do this.

And I'm alive even now, to see it!

>> Tell me about the experiments in space.

>> Experiments are really hard to do and train to do them in space.

You get up there, get disoriented and things don't look the same.

We call it having the space stupids when you first get up.

On the ground, it's so simple.

Do A.

Do B.

Do C and you're yawning.

You get into space and you've got A. Oh, that's A.

They labelled it A.

Because your brain doesn't think as clearly when you start flying.

We know this is because when we float in space the body fluids float as well.

So we have about a litre of blood in each leg that gravity is pulling down.

Just ask anybody with varicose veins.

It's pulling it down in the leg.

The veins have one-way valves.

So it pushes up, the valve opens and the blood goes back up.

Then the valve is supposed to come back down and stop blood from going back.

So you can imagine going into space.

The blood gets pushed up but there's no gravity pulling it back down in the legs.

It stays up.

There's a shift in fluid.

It...goes against thinking clearly, if I can put it like that.

>> I want to ask about gender.

It's interesting.

A couple of things I read that you wrote.

"A lifetimeúof coping with issues of role and gender vanished.

As you entered... got into space.

"But I've certainly been bruised by struggling upstream on earth" How bruised?

How hard had it been for you as a woman?

>> It still is hard.

One of the hardest things now is to go back.

I'd like to go back to my 12 or 16 year-old self and just give me some advice.

>> You thought you always had to fight that.

>> Yeah, always.

>> At astronaut training and through university?

>> Yeah!

I specialized in something that years ago, there weren't a lot of women-- not a female neurologist.

There were a lot of people biased against women doing things because you were supposed to pick.

One guy when I was in medical school--one of our mentors said, "The best specialty for women is ophthalmology."

I thought, "Yeah, I like eyes.

That would be great!"

But he gave the reason: because you can go have a family and do your practice.

Well, that's not the reason you do ophthalmology.

You do ophthalmology because you like it.

Maybe people don't.

Maybe they pick things because they have to balance things in their career.

I understand that.

But if you're not passionate about it, you're not going to do well.

>> You always thought you had to fight.

It's interesting.

You've also said after the flight, what an achievement, I was not granted an opportunity to train further with NASA.

They said, "Your contract is over".

And they kept the men.

>> That's right.

I've had three really down times in my life.

That was one of the most stellar examples.

That I'd come back to the space agency that was housed in a building in Ottawa.

After being in Parliament and fêted by all-- the picture with the prime minister and everything.

The same day going in a taxi to the space office in Ottawa to be hauled into a conference room with no other support.

No HR person, nothing.

No heads up.

This guy who was an engineer said to me, "Well, your contract is over."

I'm the only one in a big boardroom.

I'm like, "What?

What do you mean my contract is over?"

The neurolab is going on.

I'm the only neurologist in the Canada Space program.

I should be on that.

There was no reason why I shouldn't be doing that.

But there was nothing.

He said, "Well, we can keep you for a year but you give up your space medicine research as of today.

You can do some... >> Did you ever find out why?

>> No.

For years, I never told anybody this.

>> Was it just humiliating?

>> It wasn't humiliating It was... >> Infuriating!

>> It was infuriating!

One of the hardest things I had to do was to try to reconfigure my life and myself, that second forward.

I tried talking to people.

I wrote this lovely letter of resignation which they wanted me to do, because I had to leave.

I said in it I'd wished I'd had more opportunity to use the skill set, that basically the taxpayers had paid for me to do this.

That I felt it was a missed opportunity.

>> What did you do with that?

I know resilience is something that really interests you.

Looking at other peoples' lives than your own.

So was it a question of moving on.

So you came to photography.

And a vision of communicating about the planet and earth.

And making your mission in that.

>> I'd planned on photographing as much of Earth's landscape as I could and I did!

I'd really developed a passion for deserts.

I did a small book called, The Arid Edge of Earth .

But all those things became very important to me when I looked out the window.

I didn't have time to look out the window a lot.

But when I did see it, it made it more and more imperative that I communicate that somehow.

>> One of the projects you're involved with now is looking at space for birds and migration corridors.

Again, back to your animals...

This from space.

This is a great project for you.

>> Yes, I became a principle investigator with NASA for migratory bird work maybe seven years ago.

It's hard to tell with COVID what the timeframe is.

I decided it would be nice to have three perspectives of migration.

I've always liked flight.

When I was a little girl, I would do projects on birds.

When I was in space, I didn't hear any bird song or sounds.

It was nothing.

When you look at the planet, all you hear is human noise behind your machinery.

It was a revelation that this was what it would be like if we didn't have birds.

There would be no sound.

We associate that with romance, agriculture.

We associate sounds of nature with some many wonderful things for our mental health too.

So I thought, when I have the opportunity, it would be great to get these three perspectives.

Space perspective, looking... because we can't even see the whole migratory pathway from one shot from space.

We have to take multiple samples to do that.

Then I could go photograph them from my helicopter which I do.

To take the relationships of the landscapes, of land and water-- the bird's eye view.

Then down on the surface.

More of the behaviours.

Whether they're flock behaviours of the Lesser Flamingo.

Or individual behaviours of the endangered Whooping Crane.

To try to get people to understand life is so precious.

Some of these creatures are in danger because of habitat loss.

But this is another way of communicating it.

I thought the three perspectives would tie it all together.

So that's what I've done.

Through the Earth Observation people at Johnson Space Center, we've set up co-ordinates of different parts of the migratory pathways.

There are about seven species that I've been really wanting to follow.

I send them to the Space Station.

I give certain criteria and they get these images.

I have to go through thousands of them.

But it's really worth it to try to get this picture.

>> You've had so many honours.

You're wearing your pins-- honorary docs and stuff.

But one of the coolest, I think, there is eight schools named after you!

>> Something like that.

>> ...Do you connect with those kids?

Are they your kids, in effect?

>> I remember my mother coming down to the opening of one of the schools, in the Toronto area.

She was a retired teacher.

She went...to university as a mature adult and got her degree.

She loved teaching so it was instilled in us when we were young.

So I wanted to bring her down to the opening of the school.

She went in and there were hundreds of these young students in elementary school.

They all had T-shirts on with the Bondar name on it.

My mother always wanted grandkids which... you know I couldn't give her.

She saw all these kids and said, "Look at all the grandchildren".

So that was good.

>> The kids, when they see you, must look at you like... >> She exists!

>> She's still alive!

...I show the pictures of me in black and white and they say, "Why isn't there colour, Miss?"

>> Are you happy to be a role model?

>> Yeah, I consider myself a cheerleader for women.

And a role model for men.

Because women know they can do this stuff.

But I have to be a role model so men can see that we can do it.

But also that they can also do things.

Because I don't stop and say it's just about women.

It's about all of us.

And we need all of the diversity regardless of what the gender identification is.

We need our total resources on this planet.

Because as I said, from space you know, that's all we got.

>> It is all we've got and it's so beautiful here.

What does being Canadian mean to you?

>> It's heavily influenced my connection to the natural world of earth.

If I hadn't had that experience in Canada-- because we have so much in the way of natural forests and land.

There are all the issues of climate change but setting that-- not aside to ignore it, but trying to incorporate another thought, is that I grew up in a border town between Soo Canada and Soo Michigan.

In Soo Canada, we have a lot more of the access to the Canadian Shield, the Cambrian.

Some of the oldest rocks in the world.

The lichens, the boreal forest that's north.

All these things in Canada, we have these natural lands that Indigenous people have enjoyed their life, supporting and learning from.

When I was growing up, it was that connection.

And trying to understand what the role is of a human being on the planet, given all of this natural world around us.

So I think being a Canadian has allowed me to experience that.

At a level that I might not have had, had I been somewhere else in the world.

>> It's been a total pleasure to see you.

You're so impressive!

>> Thank you very much for inviting me.

>> Thanks, Dr Bondar.

Thank you for watching.

We'll be back next week with another edition of Canada Files .

♪