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to astronaut and activist
Hadfield, who grew up in Milton, was added in June 1992 to the Canadian astronaut program and selected for mission specialist training at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas. He served as a mission specialist in November 1995 on NASA's second space shuttle mission to rendezvous and dock with the Russian Space Station Mir during an eight-day flight. He was the first Canadian mission specialist, as well as the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm in orbit and the only Canadian to ever visit Mir. The 39-year-old works as NASA's voice of mission control to shuttles in orbit, and is the chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency. His next flight scheduled for next year will deliver and install the new Canadian Robot Arm (Space Station Remote Manipulator System) and three spacewalks are planned, which will make Hadfield the first Canadian ever to leave a spacecraft and float free in space. He has a bachelor degree in mechanical engineering from Royal Military College, Kingston, 1982, and did post-graduate research at University of Waterloo that same year. He did a master of science degree in aviation systems, University of Tennessee, in 1992.
Rowley and Parent were both arrested and charged several times because of their involvement with Quebec strikes in 1946 and 1947. He served prison sentences for both strikes. They also advocated for local automony within Quebec and Canadian unions. In 1969 she co-founded a Canadian union centre, the Confederation of Canadian Unions. In 1972, she attended the founding meeting of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and has been active in that organization. Parent retired from her union job in 1983 to volunteer in Quebec feminist organizations and has been an avid supporter of aboriginal women, as well as women of colour and various minorities in their struggles for equal rights. She is credited with making a major and historic contribution to the improvement of womenıs position in Canada. Parent will receive her honorary degree at morning Convocation.
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Hadfield is participating in a space shuttle launch from Mission Control just prior to
the event, but expects to be in attendance for the afternoon ceremony.
Parent, born in Montreal in 1918, studied at McGill University. Her career in activism began
in the late 1930s at McGill when she campaigned for scholarships for both needy men and women.
She organized a union campaign among war industry workers in 1942. In 1943, with R. Kent Rowley,
whom she later married, she organized cotton and woolen mill workers in Quebec and elsewhere.
