The story of how Canadian engineers from Avro went to work for NASA after the Arrow program was cancelled, and helped put a man on the moon.

And yes, my reading friend, the topic we will explore in this week’s issue of our blog / bulletin / thingee is astronomical in nature. To paraphrase the lead singer of the American new wave band Talking Heads, in its 1981 hit Once in a lifetime , you may ask yourself why this is so. Well, one could argue that astronomy falls within the mandate of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, in Ottawa, Ontario. I am not part of this hypothetical “one” – of course. At least not officially. So, let’s talk

Grab a chair, or a beanbag, my reading friend. While it is true that we are not in Longueuil, Québec, in July 1969, waiting for a human being to set foot on the Moon, we nonetheless have the right to have a little comfort. Let us start our weekly peroration with a review of the situation. The photo above was / is from the 27 July 1969 issue of the weekly Le Petit Journal of Montréal, Québec, a publication gone for many years now. Let us continue our peroration with the question you probably

It’s not every day you receive a photo that’s out of this world…literally. Last week, staff at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum were thrilled to receive a spectacular photo from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) of a small museum badge — taken by astronaut David Saint-Jacques while aboard the International Space Station (ISS). “We were really pleased that David took the time to capture this stunning image of our museum’s badge,” says Erin Poulton, exhibition interpretation officer for the

If I may be permitted to paraphrase Lawrence Henry Gowan, a Scottish Canadian singer, Homo sapiens is a strange animal. Our history can be the best of times. It can also be the worst of times, if I may paraphrase Charles John Huffam Dickens. All of this to say (type?) that July 2019 was / is quite the month from an anniversarial point of view. Fifty years ago this month, a human, 2 humans actually, set foot on an extraterrestrial body. And what a body! The Moon, to paraphrase the title of a 1966

Dammit, my reading friend, I’m a museum curator, not a doctor. Sorry. That was uncalled for – and rather quirky as an opening sentence. Still, I couldn’t resist this little Star Trek joke, and… You do get it, don’t you? Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a whatever happened to be the flavour of the week? Sigh… What do people learn in school these days? There is no respect for the classics. To quote Marvin, the paranoid android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , magnificently played by Alan

Space, the final frontier. These were / are the voyages of generations of amateur astronomers. I hope that this introduction, combined with the above photograph, extracted from the bowels of the 7 June 1969 issue of La Presse of Montréal, Québec, the largest French-language daily newspaper in North America, stoked your curiosity just a little bit. I must confess that the observation of the celestial vault does not tug at my heartstrings. What about you, my reading friend? This being said (typed?

Hellooo there, my reading friend, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to examine the picture above, drawn from the bowels of the 25 May 1969 issue of a weekly newspaper from Montréal, Québec, that we both know very well, Le Petit Journal . Are we all ready? Perfect. Let’s go. There will be a test. Our central character of the week, the American Larry Brown, began to take an interest in model rocketry / space modelling / astromodelling around 1959, and ... What do I hear? You want to

A big hello, my reading friend. You will be happy to hear (read?), or not, that our subject of the week has, oh surprise, a direct link to the main fields of activity of my august employer, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum of Ottawa, Ontario. Yours truly found said subject as I was going through Le Petit Journal . Specifically, I was going through the 25 May 1969 issue of this weekly from Montréal, Québec, no longer published today. Would you like to be on the Moon to spend your holidays, my