Colonel Chris Hadfield

One of the speakers at STARFest was Colonel Chris Hadfield. 

Christmas before last, many of us received his book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth" . It's an incredible life guide book.

When I learned he was coming to the Arden Theatre, I picked up three tickets. On each for me, my daughter and son-in-law, Robert. Unfortunately, Robert was out of town with his job and Leanne had "family" related things to attend.

Joanne, Leslie and I went. I don't really know how to tell you what an incredible experience it was! I guess that the best I can say is that after an hour and a half, including a Q and A, it seemed liked 10 - 15 minutes!

We did get books signed.

To expedite things, library staff wrote dedication names on post-it notes in the books of those waiting in line AND took pictures as people spoke with the Colonel.

There were probably 300 people waiting in line to have books and/or tickets signed and yet Colonel Hadfield spoke individually with each person, signed whatever, and posed for a picture (or pictures). At one point, Zach, a grade 12 student, told Col. Hadfield he wasn't sure what he wanted to do post high school. Col. Hadfield stopped, said he didn't want to speak only privately to Zach, and said, "Go to your library or bookstore and see what you gravitate to: if it's the graphic arts, think about what interests you and how you can make a career from that: perhaps you can been an artist; maybe a film producer; ...

And Colonel Hadfield did it again at 7:00 p.m. that night....

Have to admit that I spent most of last night and today re-reading his book. What an inspiration!