Commander Chris Hadfield Returns to Earth

On Monday night the Toronto Maple Leafs had a 4 to 1 lead over the Boston Bruins in the 7^th and deciding game of their Stanley Cup playoff match-up.  There were just 10 minutes left to go in the game. It was at this point that the Leafs, who hadn’t been in the play-offs in almost a decade, began to think, playing carefully, as if the puck had become a delicate and expensive jewel. The Bruins came at them in blustery, masculine waves, and it was at this point that a sense of the inevitable settled. The Leafs would lose, and so they did, falling 5 to 4. It was like watching an opera where all of the Leafs drank poison at the end.

After this, as a means of contrast, Rachelle and I watched Commander Hadfield’s return to Earth. For those of you who are not Canadian, Commander Chris Hadfield is a Canadian Astronaut who has spent the last 5 months on the International Space Station. It was here, through his use of Twitter– where he accumulated nearly one million followers—that he became something of a folk hero.

Avuncular, proportional and competent, Hadfield seems like a really, really nice guy. A Canadian guy. His moustache is friendly, like the sexually non-threatening moustache of a well-liked high school teacher, and his manner is sincere, thoughtful and fun, but still, you know this guy is operating at a very high level. You want him as your next-door neighbour. He would know what to do when the power went out and you thought you heard something funny in the basement.

Attached to a parachute, the Soyuz space capsule drifted down from space into a field in Kazakhstan like a child’s toy. A bunch of unofficial looking Russians then went over, as if farmers inspecting something that had fallen from the past rather than the future, and pulled the astronauts from the capsule. This was done without the least trace of urgency, like something they were practicing for in their street clothes rather than the main event.

The first out was the Russian and he looked hale, hearty and ready to start tossing a Kettlebell around. The next to follow, the American and Hadfield, looked small, pale and a little worse for the wear, like space travel extracted a physical toll.

They were all put on what looked like unmatched lawn chairs and gave the cameras the thumbs-up. Our CBC commentators were giddy, gushing about how robust and great Hadfield looked. It was surreal, like watching some weird variation of a Soviet propaganda film.

Regardless, what Hadfield did on his mission was utterly wonderful. From his photographs, videos and tweets, he shared with the public a suggestion of what might be considered the divine. The world is stunning in its beauty, and by extension we, all just brief, tiny organic outcroppings of the same living entity, are beautiful, too.

There are many who think that the International Space Station is a huge waste of money, one that doesn’t provide sufficient scientific benefit, but Hadfield, (his Space Oddity video was the most watched on YouTube Monday) showed us that data is perhaps secondary to the opportunity to see ourselves through eyes never imagined.