\u201cI got a more holistic and compassionate view of Earth as a planet and what we need to maintain our existence as a life form.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In that year, McMaster cancelled its PE program. Perhaps more important, Bondar contracted mumps and wound up locked in a campus infirmary. The affliction caused temporary neurological damage to her right shoulder that would end her campus athletics. She recalls a nurse\u2019s words: \u201cYou might as well resign your year because you\u2019re not going to pass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day from her isolation window, she spotted her marine biology professor passing in front of Creelman Hall. \u201cI think I put a sign up that said: Help.\u201d Whatever she did, she managed to attract Dr. Susan Corey\u2019s attention. The then biology professor found work for Bondar in her lab, where she made up her missed coursework and ultimately added a zoology major to her program. As well, she pursued communications courses through the new arts college, partly so that she could explain her science studies to her family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years later, that mixed curriculum\u2014 and subsequent graduate studies at Western University and the University of Toronto, followed by completion of a medical degree at McMaster University\u2014made her an ideal candidate for the space shuttle program and the Discovery flight. Her interest in space had been sparked in childhood, all the
way back to her first Brownie Hawkeye camera and the cardboard \u201cspace helmets\u201d that arrived one day in the mail for her and her sister, Barbara. Later, as a grad student back home in the summer of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, she stood with her dad in the backyard, gazing up at the moon, and said, \u201cThat\u2019s really what I\u2019d like to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through the 1970s, that prospect appeared unlikely. Then in 1982, partly on the strength of the Canadarm, the Canadian astronaut program began, and Bondar applied to join the inaugural cohort. Lacking engineering and extensive flight experience (although she had gained a pilot\u2019s licence), she might not have seemed the most promising candidate. But it turned out that NASA liked her mixed background, going all the way back to her U of G studies ranging from plants to embryology. In late 1983, she was among the first six Canadian astronauts chosen. \u201cI knew my stuff. That\u2019s why I became the \u2018right stuff,\u2019\u201d says Bondar, who ended up running dozens of microgravity experiments aboard Discovery. \u201cOther contenders had other skill sets, but they weren\u2019t necessarily what NASA needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/porticomagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/roberta-bondar-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
That comprehensive grounding resonates with Dr. Charlotte Yates, whose official installation earlier this year as U of G president and vicechancellor included video greetings on behalf of alumni from Bondar. \u201cAs a scientist who studied biology, zoology and agriculture before becoming a medical doctor, Dr. Bondar now uses the power of her photography to advance <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
environmental advocacy,\u201d says Yates. \u201cShe is the perfect example of an interdisciplinary thinker, nurtured and supported at this very institution, who went on to impact the world with her work.\u201d As an award-winning nature photographer, Bondar has taken her cameras across much of Canada and the United States as well as Kenya. In the field, she mixes ground-level, close-up work with photographing from aircraft, sometimes half-hanging out an open helicopter doorway to get the shot. Her photos are held in various private and public collections in Canada, the United States and Europe, and have appeared in several bestselling books, including Passionate Vision, published in 2008 and containing shots from all 41 Canadian national parks. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Among numerous awards and distinctions, Roberta Bondar is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of Ontario, and an inductee of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame and the International Women\u2019s Forum\u2019s Hall of Fame. Formerly chancellor of Trent University, she has received honorary doctorates from almost 30 Canadian and American universities, including U of G in 1990. She is a specially elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an honorary Fellow and honorary vice-president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and has a star on Canada\u2019s Walk of Fame<\/p>
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI love the body of work she did in our national parks,\u201d says Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose own large-scale depictions of humanity\u2019s environmental impacts include the earlier well-subscribed exhibitions \u201cAnthropocene\u201d and \u201cManufactured Landscapes.\u201d Both photographers have spoken and exhibited together at various events; recent samples of their work will be paired this year in Canada\u2019s Senate building under a project led by Senator and art historian Patricia Bovey. Burtynsky says he and his colleague are part of a \u201csea change\u201d involving various contemporary artists\u2014writers, photographers, painters, filmmakers\u2014whose works are increasingly drawing attention to environmental issues and concerns. In Bondar\u2019s case, he says, her former vantage point from the space shuttle lends her extra conviction. \u201cI think her seeing the Earth from space, that moment when a lot of astronauts come to see the Earth in powerful ways\u2014you don\u2019t see boundaries, countries, you see the nature, the green, the brown. She speaks about and makes photographs of that landscape under threat. It\u2019s important for us to have respect and reverence and to understand its important role in our own survival.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several of Bondar\u2019s works were part of a 2017 exhibition called \u201cLight in the Land: The Nature of Canada\u201d held at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Interviewed during that event, she said, \u201cSomething that I\u2019m trying to bring to people\u2019s attention in terms of the diversity of the country is that we have different types of biological systems. We have places that some people will never get to, and I feel that it is important for me, after my space flight, to talk to people about the very valuable piece of real estate that Canada has.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur survival depends on how we treat the world around us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The same desire to share her vision now drives the work of the Roberta Bondar Foundation, based in Toronto. Established in 2009, the foundation aims to promote environmental conservation, respect and curiosity through science and art. Explaining the impetus for its creation, she says, \u201cI firmly believe if you love something, you want to protect it. I see the natural world in peril because of what we do. I feel the role of my foundation, and my views since my space flight, is really to present the beauty of the world as it exists in the moment. We need to take some responsibility in trying to lessen the impact that we have as a life form on these wonderful natural systems.\u201d For Bondar, it\u2019s an ethical responsibility that finds expression in living more economically, including repurposing material and belongings like, say, used camera equipment. Staff at an observatory in Alberta\u2019s Wood Buffalo National Park, for instance, are using donated equipment marked with her name. \u201cI can\u2019t remember the last time I sold a camera. I don\u2019t like dumping things,\u201d she says. \u201cI think our survival depends on how we treat each other and how we treat the world around us. It\u2019s the ethical nature of human beings that will dictate the survival not just of human beings but the survival of the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today the foundation\u2019s programs include everything from travelling biodiversity exhibitions taken to galleries, schools and museums, to a nature photography challenge for students run in partnership with EcoSchools Canada, to a national innovation and creativity award launched early this year as part of the Discovery flight anniversary. Under a relatively new endeavour called Space for Birds, Bondar aims to draw attention to human impacts\u2014notably hunting and habitat loss\u2014on endangered species of migratory birds. She\u2019s chosen seven threatened species whose migration paths between breeding<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and wintering grounds collectively span much of the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nature photographer Roberta Bondar documents migratory bird species<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n