I actually don't remember Apollo 11 exactly because, at the time, I was five years old. The landing happened at night, and the walk on the moon happened at night eastern time, and I asked my parents; my mom said I was probably asleep, and so I just don't have any recollection. I do have recollection of the later missions to the moon.
I am from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I was born there, and I am a twelfth Montrealer.
When I saw the Earth from above, personally, as a spacecraft operator, it certainly reinforced and drove home the fact that there's one place where we can live right now.
If you're in space on the way to Mars, and a conflict develops... you can't turn around and go back, because Earth is already gone on its orbit.
I'm 9, 10, and I'm watching the Apollo astronauts go to the moon. We're sitting on the floor of a school, and they have this... huge TV, and I'm looking at that, and I'm thinking 'Me, I would like to do that.' But it didn't dawn on me then that they were American; I was Canadian. They were men; I was a girl. They were test pilots, military folks.
If you want more kids to become engineers in space, travellers, and pilots, then you have to expose them to those types of careers.
We're all on-board the same planetary spaceship, but together, we can move mountains.
Clearly, when I first started talking about the fact that I wanted to be an astronaut, I was in primary school, so people understand that we want to be all kinds of things then. It's not a big deal.
My son, Laurier, and I love being outdoors. We like to ski and to skate, to play in the snow, and simply to walk and enjoy the winter scenery.
Human interaction is not a simple thing.
You can learn at any age, but when you are young, you are like a sponge, and when you are introduced to more different types of things before the age of seven and eight, then you get fascinated by that.
Most astronauts are very down-to-earth people. Many of us, three-quarters, have an engineering degree, and we have a very Cartesian, rational approach to things.
I'm a true believer in the strength of teamwork, in the power of dreams.
