David Saint-Jacques ‘can’t wait’ to be next Canadian in space

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When David Saint-Jacques was a boy, growing up in Saint-Lambert, Que., near Montreal, his father gave him a Rubik's Cube to keep him occupied in the back seat during long road trips.

"It was a technical challenge and there is also something kind of artistic about the Rubik's Cube. It's very dear to me," he said.

Now, Dr. Saint-Jacques hopes to take his father's gift with him on a journey far beyond any car ride when he heads to the International Space Station in November of 2018 as the next Canadian chosen to fly in space.

Navdeep Bains, federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, announced the selection in Ottawa on Monday.

Dr. Saint-Jacques, 46, is slated to travel to the station in a Russian Soyuz rocket for a six-month mission on the orbiting laboratory.

"I can't wait for the chance to look out the window and experience for myself what it really means when we talk about spaceship Earth – the fact that we're all together on this little blue marble floating in the deadly vacuum of space," Dr. Saint-Jacques said.

He'll be the first Canadian to go into orbit since Chris Hadfield became a social-media superstar as the station's guitar-strumming commander. Dr. Saint-Jacques said he has no musical aspirations for his time in space, but adds that the most important lesson he learned from his predecessor is that "the best way to com- municate is by being yourself."

For Dr. Saint-Jacques, the coming voyage will mark the realization of a personal dream to work as a scientist in space – a dream that once seemed to him merely "a fantasy," and a way of challenging himself to do his best.

"When I was a child, there were no Canadian astronauts so it wasn't really an option," he said. "But it remained to me a kind of a model to follow. In different situations, I would ask myself, 'What would an astronaut do?'"

The answer for him was to take on whatever physical and intellectual challenges came his way, from mountaineering to learning languages, and always travelling and seeking new knowledge and experiences.

Following in his father's footsteps, he first studied engineering physics at École polytechnique in Montreal, getting his bachelor's degree there in 1993 and working as an engineer for two years. After winning a scholarship, he went on to Cambridge University in Britain, earning a PhD in astrophysics and then working in some of the world's premier astronomical facilities in the Canary Islands, Hawaii and Tokyo. By the age of 31, he had joined the astrophysics group at the University of Montreal when his astronaut metre began pointing him toward medical school.

"It was a bit of a coming of age," he said. "I kind of felt the calling to apply my knowledge to helping people more directly."

As a physician, he headed north, eventually becoming co-chief of medicine at a health-care facility in the Inuit community of Puvirnituq, Nunavik, on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay.

This is the professional role that Dr. Saint-Jacques identifies with most strongly and one he says overlaps with the medical challenges that can arise during long-duration missions in space.

"Remote-care medicine was my daily life up North and the problem of keeping astronauts healthy is the same problem," he said.

More specifics on the scientific studies that Dr. Saint-Jacques will conduct in orbit are expected to emerge as he and his two as yet unnamed crew mates begin training for their mission this fall. Research activities on the station are currently funded to 2024.

Beyond that, Dr. Saint-Jacques says it is clear that at some point astronauts will fly to Mars but he added that even though this is a technical possibility, more study is needed to understand how to make the trip reasonably safe.

"It's like saying, 'We just invented the life raft. Let's cross the Atlantic,'" he said. "You could do that, but why don't we wait until we at least have sailboats."

Dr. Saint-Jacques is married with two children and notes that the life of an astronaut is just as demanding of family members because of the long hours of training and travel it entails.

"Without them it's impossible," he said.

He added that his children are still too young to fully grasp the exceptional nature of his job.

"Frankly, they're more impressed by firemen," he said. "So I tell them that fighting fires is part of my training and that way I get a bit of respect from them."