‘He had the weight of Canada on his shoulders’: An oral history of Canada’s first trip to space, 40 years later

It was that contribution to the shuttle program that led NASA in 1983 to offer a handful of shuttle launch seats to Canada. And after a breakneck, high-stakes six months of training, on Oct. 5, 1984, Quebec City native Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space.

“We’ve had a lot of success stories,” said Mathieu Caron, the Canadian Space Agency’s director of astronauts, life sciences and space medicine. “But when a human being goes into space … that really captures the imagination of everyone, and it inspires people.”

And that, Caron said, is what happened when Garneau flew.

On the 40th anniversary of that flight, this is the story of what happened, told by those who lived it.

Karl Doetsch, head of the Canadian astronaut and Canadarm program: In July (of 1983), we placed a small “Help Wanted” advertisement in the national newspapers … and in no time at all, we had over 4,000 applicants.

Garneau: I said, “I’m sure I won’t get chosen, but this could be an incredible adventure, out there on the frontier of space.” And I’d always wonder if I didn’t apply whether I could have made it. So I sent in my application.

Doetsch: We then had a very intense period — probably a record for government — first of all culling the list down to 75 that we wanted to interview, and then interviewing those 75 in whichever region of Canada they came from.

Bob Thirsk, Garneau’s backup for the mission: Do you know the famous painting called “American Gothic?” It’s two farmers with a kind of dour look on their faces. So just imagine sitting around a table, you’re on one side of this huge table and then you’ve got 10 or 12 (National Research Council) and Canadian government representatives sitting on the other side of the table, the “American Gothic” expression on their faces.

Garneau: We had to make a speech in front of the selection committee on a topic, so that they could look at us as public speakers, because a very important part of the job is communicating what it’s like to be an astronaut.

Thirsk: They had received instruction from an interview expert to not react to things that we said … I threw some humour into my speech … but I just got this blank look from everyone sitting around the table. And I thought, “Oh, Bob. You’re not a serious candidate here.”

Doetsch: We invited 20 (finalists) to Ottawa to do some detailed medical tests.

Thirsk: We went to a (Department of Defence) medical centre in Ottawa and we spent a week having every single orifice in our body probed. CTs done, EKGs, vision tests. It was very, very extensive.

Garneau: There was a cocktail party where they looked at us to see if we had the social graces or whatever. … They also put us in front of a news anchor in a mock interview situation.

Thirsk: Marc and I talked often that week during the selection process. I admired his electronics engineering work that he had done with the Canadian Navy.

Garneau: At the end of that (week), they said, “OK. We’re going to call all of you on Dec. 3, sometime between 5 and 7 p.m., so stand by your telephone.” … The phone rang around 6 o’clock in the evening. I tried to sound calm … I just felt that, after this six-month-long process with many different phases, an enormous relief, but also the realization my life was going to change dramatically because I would now go from being a private person — my career was in the navy at the time — to becoming a public figure.

Alongside Garneau and Thirsk, the NRC selected four others to join its astronaut program. In early 1984, the council chose Garneau to fly first, with Thirsk as the backup.

Garneau: After I was selected to be the first to fly, the media were in my house and in my backyard, in my children’s bedroom while we were reading bedtime stories to them. There was this enormous fascination with what kind of people are astronauts.

Thirsk: We relocated from Ottawa down to Houston to integrate with the shuttle crew.

Garneau: I had to learn all the things I needed to learn so that I could be a competent person on board the vehicle in case of an emergency. How to use the bathroom, how to make food, how to use the communications equipment, how to bail out in case of a problem.

Thirsk: Typically it takes five years or so to plan a shuttle mission and the crew training is probably a year and a half long, and here we were, trying to do all of this in six months or so. It was stressful times.

Garneau: For that flight, I was a payload specialist, which is more or less a guest on board who has a task to perform … I would be conducting (10) experiments put forth by Canadian scientists, so I had to learn how to do those experiments.

Thirsk: (All the experiments) had to fit inside a locker no bigger than a bread box.

Doetsch: We also had a deluge of schools, societies, organizations, media wanting to speak to these astronauts.

Thirsk: I was so proud of Marc. He actually had the weight of Canada on his shoulders. … I was just amazed at how cool, calm and collected he presented himself. … He performed everything perfectly.

The pressure ratcheted up three weeks before launch, when Garneau and two of his crew members were invited to the White House to meet with President Ronald Reagan and newly elected Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Garneau: I have to admit that NASA was upset when this request came because (it wanted) the crew to be focused on the mission and nothing else … but you can’t say no to the president of the United States.

Thirsk: As we were getting close to launch day, I said, “Marc, do you have any fear? You’re going to be the first Canadian. You’re gonna be launching on top of four million pounds of explosive propellant.” And he said, “No. You know what, my biggest fear is screwing up. I don’t want to disappoint Canada.”

Garneau: I was really focused primarily on actually doing what I needed to do to be ready. I really wanted to be ready so that I could make my country proud.

Thirsk: In the last seven days before launch, the crew goes into quarantine, which means they’re off living by themselves in a NASA building.

Doetsch: The media interactions with Marc and the press were very limited, because that was part of the NASA regulation.

Thirsk: Maybe Marc didn’t experience the public attention, the media attention, but I certainly did. … There were (dozens) of Canadian media down at Cape Canaveral to cover the mission. I interviewed with all of them in the days before liftoff.

On Oct. 5, 1984 — just 10 months after Garneau was selected — he woke up at 2:45 a.m., dressed, shaved, underwent a medical exam and ate breakfast.

Garneau: The truth is, astronauts don’t eat that much because they know that they’re going to be sitting in this vehicle, tipped over, pointing toward the sky … for two and a half hours.

After breakfast —Garneau thinks he had eggs and toast — he met with Tom Siddon, Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology. Then he left for the launch pad in NASA’s Astrovan.

Garneau: You take the elevator up to level 195. You cross the gangway, you go into a white room that’s just up against the vehicle. They check you up one last time, and then one by one, you get into the vehicle. Remember, it’s tipped at 90 degrees, so it’s not like just getting into a car. … You just wait for two and a half hours. It’s the longest two and a half hours of your life.

Doetsch: Of course, we had to address contingencies. What if something happened (during launch)?

Garneau: You get butterflies at that point for a whole bunch of reasons. One is because, technically, there’s always some risk in trying to get into space. You have to unleash so much energy and everything has to go fine in order to make it.

Doetsch: We had really worked very hard as a team to get ready for this, and there’s always a little bit of danger in launches.

Garneau: But let me hasten to add, you’re not nervous enough to say, “Hey, I want to get off this thing.” There’s just too much pulling you towards this incredible adventure.

Doetsch: I was normally put into what you might call the press area. … There were basically bleachers for media from all over the world. … Everybody’s kind of milling around, and then you see the clock sort of getting closer and closer to liftoff time.

Garneau: The first engine is lit up at T-minus six seconds and then the other two follow that. Then at T-equals zero, it’s launch.

Doetsch: Your eyes would see the flash as the boosters lit, and then you felt the whole ground shake. You felt the ground shake before you heard the sound wave reaching you … and then you got the whole thing combining. You have this slowly rising shuttle with its boosters, with millions of pounds of thrust, roaring away.

Garneau: There’s three primary sensations. One is the noise. … The second is vibration. … And the third is, gradually, you accelerate, which makes you feel heavier and heavier in your seat. At that point, you’re past the point of no return. You’re committed.

Doetsch: You see the shuttle rising out of this cloud. … You’ve got the visceral sense of the energy, the power that’s involved, and then the visual beauty of a rapidly accelerating shuttle until it’s out of sight.

Garneau: They turn off the engines and suddenly it’s very quiet, and you feel yourself floating in your seat, and you realize, “I’m in space.” … I floated over to the window and looked out and realized, “Oh my goodness, this is incredible.” … That is the moment that stays with you, I’m darn sure, until my dying days.

Garneau: Your perspective does shift. … Here we are, the cradle of humanity, Earth below us, and surrounded by the darkness of space. There is nowhere else to go. In other words, there is no option B.

Garneau spent the next eight days on the Shuttle, performing his experiments.

Garneau: When you have some free time, what you really, really want to do is just go over and stick your face in the window and look down at Earth, because it is totally mesmerizing.

Garneau: One night, I slept untethered and woke up in the middle of the night about a foot from one of my fellow crew members. I thought, “Oh, I hope he doesn’t open his eyes now. I’ll have some explaining to do.”

The shuttle landed back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after noon on Oct. 13. Later, Garneau embarked on a cross-country speaking tour.

Doetsch: Marc did us proud. I think he did the country proud. Being the first astronaut has given him a special aura.

Garneau: If I had screwed up badly on my first flight, it would have caused NASA to hesitate (and say), “Well, those Canadians,” even though it’d be a sample of one. So I did feel that pressure.

Doetsch: If Marc was concerned about not letting the side down, I can report that he did anything but. He really put us on the map as a model for how this sort of smaller scale experimentation could be done.

Thirsk: Marc Garneau really had a load on his shoulders. He felt the load and he did well. I really think that he paved the way for those of us who followed.

Doetsch: Probably about six months later, I was invited to Washington to meet the administrator (of NASA). And he said to us, “You know, you Canadians have shown us the way.”

Doetsch: Canadians suddenly recognized that they were in space. … It brought space into the living rooms of common people.

In the decades that followed, eight other Canadians travelled to space. Garneau flew two more times on the shuttle before retiring to a career as president of the Canadian Space Agency and later a federal MP and minister. Thirsk flew to space for the first time in 1996 on the Space Shuttle Columbia and in 2009 spent 188 days aboard the International Space Station.

Doetsch: From that time 40 years ago, we’ve come a long way. … Now, we have two of our current generation astronauts ready to go around the moon. … We’re part of something that most nations want to do and if they can’t do it, they’re envious.