pretty random

This weekend I happened to be near Parc Downsview Park with some time to kill, and I decided to try and find the Canadian Air & Space Museum, as I had never been. In fact, I didn't even know it existed until it hit the news a couple months ago, when its landlord (the federal government) served them with an eviction notice. Apparently their site is slated for redevelopment as a 4-pad hockey rink.

Members and volunteers at the museum are understandably upset about this. Hurting for funding and volunteers, and now losing their home, they're fighting back with letters to decision-making politicians and influencers, a petition, and an information campaign to help people realize what's happening. They even got some help from Harrison Ford! One challenge: they compete, in a sense, with the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, plus other aeronautical museums out in western and Atlantic Canada on and off military bases. All of these museums have amazing stuff to offer and funding needs, so it's very hard to figure out whether they all should be kept.


One thing the Canadian Air & Space Museum has that none of the others have is an historic building at 65 Carl Hall Road that hosted some amazing elements of Canadian aerospace history. It's the original 1929 home of de Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd -- maker of the Dash-8 and many many more incredible aircraft. This building and others beside it (long gone now) were home to warplane and engine design and assembly, even satellites were built here. The Downsview site was hugely important in Canada's war efforts (and therefore Britain's too), and the building itself is really in good shape due to good construction. Sadly, the museum's funding is almost nonexistent -- over $100k behind in rent, for example, though the situation was improving when the eviction notice came. When I drove up there was an engine part sitting outside in the rain - a big problem for any museum that has more history to display than it has space to store.

I can't say for sure that I believe that building should be saved. It would be easiest for the museum, and Downsview has a LOT of space -- surely a hockey rink could be located across the parking lot, for example. Being forced out would result in the loss of several amazing pieces of history that would be damaged in the move, and if no storage could be located who knows what could happen to the many one-of-a-kind mid-restoration aircraft? It's scary to contemplate the death of a museum.

If a new location and sufficient storage space, and stable funding, were to be found, then I'd be OK with them changing locations. The building holds great meaning, but if the choice is die a slow death there or potentially grow and find new visitors elsewhere... it's all awful timing since the new York University subway extension will have its first new subway station only a couple hundred metres away. So many potential visitors! But that makes the land worth even more as something else of course.

Without official heritage designation, 65 Carl Hall Road is at risk. The locks have been changed, and a lockbox sits on the front door, but there are still volunteers and staff inside maintaining the museum. When I found it Sunday morning I tried the door just in case it was open. It wasn't, but a volunteer quickly ran to the door and let me in. He explained that the museum was closed to the general public by order of the landlord, but that members were still welcome... would I like to become a member? It took be about 3 nanoseconds to decide that I would like that very much indeed.


I'm so glad I went. I spent over two hours wandering the museum, photographing as much as I could. I knew that the chances of getting back to the museum soon, or ever, were slim. My photographs and captions can be viewed in this Facebook gallery. Sorry, non-Facebookers, but it appears to be accessible to all even logged out.

All photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151021988855593.767591.610245592&type=1&l=3e576d5ff0

I highly recommend a visit. Buy your membership online, throw in a small donation maybe, and head up there soon! TTC bus route 101 will take you right there from Downsview (soon to be Sheppard West) station. Let me know if you want somebody geeky to join you - I'll clear my calendar!

I'm kinda pleased with how my cover letter turned out, so I thought I would share. Try to find the cutesy thing I did to amuse myself, since I figure this is my last involvement with the Canadian Space Agency. (answer at end)

All my life I've wanted to be involved in the space program. As a child in British Columbia my room was plastered with space shuttles, rockets, planets, and stars. I was forced to leave one wall blank white just so my mother wouldn't feel claustrophobic entering my room.

The Canadian Space Agency sits at the intersection of three things I hold very dear to my heart: space, Canada, and the importance of space sciences to understanding the world around us. The opportunity to become a part of this incredible enterprise is one that I could not pass by, and one which I know in my heart I would stop at nothing to help make it successful.

I know that CSA needs strong scientists to ensure that missions are a success, and I have followed the achievements of our previous astronaut candidates with interest. But I worry that CSA also requires communicators, and this is where I would excel within the team. We are surrounded today by strong conflict around climate science, evolutionary science, peak oil, and many other game-changing events for our civilization, but our decision-makers do not have the scientific backgrounds required to separate fact from fiction. CSA and its partner agencies around the world help with that endeavour, and astronauts form a large part of the public face of that effort.

As a Canadian astronaut, I would work tirelessly to bring both the excitement of discovery and the potential for innovation to the public. I work with students every day in my adult education classes and I love nothing more than to see their faces light up with the thrill of understanding technology and learning to better their careers and their lives. Science has brought us incredible improvements in our way or life and our ability to learn about our planet and our universe, and that thrill is needed more than ever as we confront new and greater challenges to our health and the health of our home.

I see my role as being a challenger to the status quo. While governments and corporations each seek answers by looking inward and by reacting, our scientific exploration must look outward and must by nature travel in unexpected directions. Our astronauts are not just cogs in the mission machine, matching this component to this module. In fact, our astronauts are the human face on the CSA budget, the excitement on the scientific journal article, and the inspiration for thousands of Canadian children to pay attention to science and bring their own accomplishments to our country.

To this end, I bring extensive teaching, team management, and communications experience to your team. I am trained and certified in teaching, communications, and team management (see resume for details). I regularly have to transcend language barriers, bias and prejudice, and learner competency levels to ensure requirements are achieved, deadlines are met, and clients are happy with their classroom experience. My experience with defusing conflict and ensuring clarity of communication can only add to the success of CSA and my team.

Not only can I teach, but even more importantly I can learn. As a technical trainer, I am regularly called upon to learn new technologies even before general release of the product, and then effectively design and deliver training to a highly technical audience with specific timelines and requirements. My client evaluations show success in this endeavour, with satisfaction scores averaging over 95%.

From watching Marc Garneau on Challenger and Roberta Bondar on Discovery making Canadian history, to seeing Steve MacLean on Atlantis and Dave Williams on Endeavour continuing Canada’s and humanity’s achievements, I have dreamed of bringing anything and everything I have to the Canadian Space Agency and the Canadian Astronaut Corps. I look forward to seeing further successes for CSA, and I hope to one day be a part of making them happen.

Sincerely,

Cameron MacLeod

If you spot an error, then I'm screwed, because it's due at 9pm eastern and I'm going to be out of the house until after that. God, I hope there's nothing stupid in there. :-)


* I included all the different Space Shuttle names in my text in non-space contexts. The only one I couldn't do without it being awkward was Atlantis, so I included it by name in my final paragraph.

I can't BELIEVE they did that. We're ten or so episodes from the end, and they burned through such huge events in just one episode? If this was season two it would have taken like four episodes. What the hell does RDM have in store?

God that show is good. I know some of you haven't been enjoying it this season, but I just love seeing a vision come to completion. Same with Matrix 2&3 -- they weren't my story, so while I can enjoy or not enjoy* I never felt like I had the right to feel betrayed, as some did.

Anyway.

Added: next episode doesn't air until 2009? WTF! I had read that but forgotten. Argh.

* for the record: enjoyed. especially the wackiest bits.

A big welcome to our newest dwarf planet, Eris, and its moon, Dysnomia. Sounds like a genetic disorder. But both are far more elegant than Xena and Gabrielle.

Twenty years ago today, human spaceflight took a big hit, and it really hasn't recovered yet. Separate from wehther you support NASA, or the USA, the seven crew took a gigantic risk in volunteering to leave Earth for a while, and it's unfortunate that they couldn't return home.

From the current Wikipedia entry:

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on the morning of January 28, 1986. Space Shuttle Challenger, on mission 51L/STS-33 (the 25th of the STS program) was destroyed 73 seconds into its flight because of the failure of an O-ring seal in the aft field joint of the right solid rocket booster (SRB). The seal failure caused a leak with a powerful lateral flame from the SRB that impinged on the adjacent external propellant tank and aft SRB connecting strut, and within seconds the flame caused full structural failure[1]. All seven crew members were killed when their surviving and slowly tumbling crew compartment impacted with the surface of the ocean. That compartment and many other vehicle fragments were recovered from the ocean floor. U.S. manned space flights did not resume until over two years later.

Among the crew was Christa McAuliffe, scheduled to be the first teacher in space as well as the first "civilian" (non-aviator) in space. Students worldwide had expected to watch her deliver a science lesson from space on television. Instead, countless people watched the disintegration of the shuttle, either as it happened live, or later that day.

United States President Ronald Reagan postponed his State of the Union address and gave a national address from the Oval Office of the White House where he said, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'" The pictures of Challenger disintegrating remain some of the defining imagery of the late 20th Century for many Americans.

I believe that our reaching into space could help us come together as a planet, rather than as warring factions. It's fun to make fun of NASA's dubious track record, but I don't want us to turn inward any more than we already have.

More: Popular Challenger myths, Wikipedia Entry.