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A Canadian reaches the arm

Broadcast Date: Nov. 9, 1995

Chris Hadfield's roots go deep into the soil of the Ontario farm where he grew up. But in two days, his boyhood dreams — and a lot of hard work — will propel him high into the sky. Hadfield will blast into space aboard the shuttle Atlantis. While up there, he'll become the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm. The amazing journey began in 1969, Hadfield says in this television clip from CBC's The Journal.

It was then that a nine-year-old Hadfield watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon and decided that he too would go to space. "You need to dream big, you have to aim high and perhaps you'll have a chance to get where you're pointing," he says. He learned to fly from his father, who was both a farmer and a pilot. Hadfield later became a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, twice winning the coveted Top Gun title at a U.S. military flight school.

Now, Hadfield has taken his flying to a new level. As a shuttle mission specialist, he'll use the Canadarm to connect a docking module to the Russian space station Mir — the first time a Canadian has controlled the arm in space. "It's about time," Hadfield notes. The astronaut will be a long way from home, where he learned to operate tractors and front-end loaders. But Hadfield says he'll be using those very skills in space.

A Canadian reaches the arm

• Chris Hadfield was born Aug. 29, 1959 in Sarnia, Ont. He was raised on the family corn farm near Milton, Ont. Hadfield earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. He also did post-graduate research at the University of Waterloo and earned a masters of science degree in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee. A married father of three, his hobbies include skiing and playing guitar.

• Hadfield first took the controls of an airplane, under his father's watchful eye, when he was just three years old. Thirty-three years later, he became the fourth Canadian in space, the first Canadian shuttle mission specialist, the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm in orbit and the only Canadian to board Mir, which was decommissioned in 2001 and later disintegrated in the earth's atmosphere.

• As a boy, Hadfield taught ski racing and was an air cadet. He won a glider pilot scholarship at age 15 and a powered pilot scholarship at age 16. He joined Canada's Armed Forces in May 1978 and rose through the officer ranks. In June 1985, off the Newfoundland coast, he became the first CF-18 fighter jet pilot to intercept a Soviet "Bear" bomber. In June 1992, he was among four Canadians chosen for astronaut training from a field of 5,330.

• Hadfield's first trip into space, the Nov. 12 to 20, 1995 mission, was a success. On Nov. 14, he used the Canadarm to hoist the five-metre, Russian-built docking module into place. The tunnel-like appendage kept a safe buffer between the Mir space station and visiting shuttles. After Atlantis successfully docked with Mir — the first such rendezvous — a hatch was opened and the two crews exchanged gifts of candy and flowers.

• Hadfield gave the three Mir crew members, who had been in orbit for two months, some maple leaf sugar candies. He also presented one with a collapsible classical travel guitar. On the mission, Hadfield carried patches and crests from the Royal Military College, Canadian Forces bases Cold Lake and Bagotville and 820 Milton Air Cadet Squadron. More personal items included his own Air Force wings, his father's Air Canada wings and a guitar pick.

• Also aboard the Atlantis was a model of the shuttle. It had been on the birthday cake of Doug Hamilton, one of 20 finalists from the Canadian astronaut recruitment class of 1992. All 20 finalists had vowed that the first of them to make it into space would take the model with them. Hadfield, one of the party organizers, honoured that promise. (Hamilton, a doctor, was not chosen to be an astronaut but became a NASA doctor.)

• Hadfield went into orbit again in April 2001, when he became the first Canadian astronaut to spacewalk. He has also been the chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency and, on the ground, the voice of mission control to astronauts.

A Canadian reaches the arm

Medium: Television

Program: The National Magazine

Broadcast Date: Nov. 9, 1995

Guest(s): Chris Hadfield, Roger Hadfield

Host: Alison Smith
Reporter: Bob McDonald

Duration: 13:59

Last updated:
Oct. 23, 2009