Media 2024
CBC Radio interviews
Dec, 2024
Radio Interviews Make Space for Birds!
Dr. Bondar’s new book, Space for Birds ~ Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight, is attracting interest from birders, book stores, and broadcasters.
What questions would you want to ask Dr. Bondar about her work and her new book?
Some of the latest questions include:
Why write about birds?
How long did this book take you to put together?
What role did your space flight play in this book?
Why choose the Whooping Crane and Lesser Flamingo?
Why is bird migration important to us?
What was the hardest image to capture?
Here are some of the questions in latest CBC radio interviews with Dr. Bondar and her Space for Birds ~ Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight…
CBC Daybreak Montreal
Dec 5, 2024
Sean Henry greets Dr. Bondar to talk about Space for Birds – the Whooping Crane, the Lesser Flamingo, and what we can learn from these creatures and their habits.
CBC Daybreak North (BC – Prince George/Prince Rupert)
Dec 2, 2024
Carolina de Ryk connects with Dr. Bondar about her new book Space for Birds ~ Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight… at the 1:43.10 mark of the day’s program
Buteo Books
San Rafael, CA
Nov 2024
Buteo Books adds Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight to its 2024 catalog.
Buteo Books carries one of the largest selections of fine, rare, and new books on ornithology & birding in the world.
The catalog entry captures Dr. Bondar’s intent: “The lives and habitats of two majestic bird species are shared through striking space, aerial, and surface photographs to artfully convey the fragile elegance of life on Earth. New perspectives can inspire us to think differently about our place in the universe.”
It picks up on Dr. Bondar’s “rare perspective she enjoyed aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery” that enhanced her “reverence for the world we share with non-human life — especially birds, the only animals also able to fly vast distances across the globe.”
“an accomplished professional nature and landscape photographer”
“Photos from the International Space Station convey the continental scale of these birds’ travels, and Bondar’s aerial and surface photos, accompanied by insights both scientific and personal, offer intimate glimpses of their daily lives and unique behaviours. While these birds lead different lives on opposite sides of the globe, they share, with each other and with us, an imperative to survive and a reliance on Earth’s fragile ecosystems.”
Toni Woodruff
Independent Book Review .com
Nov 22, 2014
An Interstellar Love Letter To Two Birds
with Long Legs, Long Necks, and Their Own Lives To Lead
Woodruff introduces the two quite different avian subjects of Space For Birds – the threatened Lesser Flamingo and the endangered Whooping Crane – concluding early on that these birds “need our help and more people like Dr. Roberta L. Bondar.”
Says Woodruff, “You’ll notice first the poetic nature of Bondar’s prose. It’s not every day that our birder coffee table books come with such beauty on the sentence level. But beyond the prose, Bondar’s also seen what so few have seen — from Space to Earth, the journey that these birds go on topographically — because she was the world’s first neurologist in space aboard the shuttle Discovery.”
“This book is a lovely ode to some long-legged, majestic beauties.”
“It’s not so much about the beauty of singular photographs to flip through (even if obviously impressive from a practical standpoint) but more so on relaying information like flight patterns, the physical effects of climate change, and what the Earth looks like zoomed out.”
Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight is available online through Amazon, Figure.1 publishing, Indigo and Barnes & Noble.
Elaine Della-Mattia
Sault Star .com
Oct 24, 2024
Roberta Bondar gets Medal for Dedicated Service
This article shares the actual citation to Dr. Bondar of the honour and includes a description of the medal, its history, and its symbols.
Awarded to citizens who “have made a significant contribution to Canada or to a particular province, territory, region or community of Canada, or have made an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada,” the medal commemorates the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III as King of Canada.
55 Sussex Drive
Ottawa ON
Oct 24, 2024
It’s an Honour
Dr. Roberta Bondar received the King Charles III Coronation Medal at the Ottawa Coronation Medal Ceremony presided over by the Honourable Edith Dumont OONT, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and the Honourable Lois Mitchell, CM, AOE, LLD, President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
Awarded to citizens who “have made a significant contribution to Canada or to a particular province, territory, region or community of Canada, or have made an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada,” the medal commemorates the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III as King of Canada.
Eric Ward, VP for Public Programs
Linda Hall Library
Kansas City, Missouri
October 20, 2024
Space for Birds:
A Science Headliners Interview with Astronaut and Photographer Dr. Roberta Bondar
Eric Ward, VP for Public Programs, Linda Hall Library, selected Dr. Bondar and her new book Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight as the latest Science Headliners feature of the Linda Hall Library – one of the world’s leading research libraries, dedicated to exploring the past, examining the present and imagining the future in fields of Science, Engineering and Technology.
Ward leads Dr. Bondar through a discussion of her career work at the intersection of Art and Science. Among these are her impressions from space when she could finally see Earth as a planet in an infinite black surround with no living thing visible below on its surface. Also discussed is her sensitivity to colour and the creation of images and canvases that draw a viewer into the image to encourage asking questions to which Science can provide at least some of the answers.
Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight is available online through Amazon, Figure.1 publishing, Indigo and Barnes & Noble.
Sales of the book support The Roberta Bondar Foundation. The Foundation recognizes the importance of building and maintaining the relationship between humans and nature.
Elaine Della-Mattia
The Sault Star
Sep 25, 2024
Space for Birds Combines Dr. Roberta Bondar’s Love for Flight and Nature
“Dr. Roberta Bondar has always had an interest in anything that could fly.” Della-Matta captures much of the flavour of Dr. Bondar’s early years through present time using Bondar’s fascination with birds and the sciences of flight. Where and how migrating birds are seen… and not seen… and what they need to survive.
Bondar continues her work with NASA and the International Space Station to help illustrate the travel patterns of the migratory birds she features in her new book – Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight. She uses the endangered Whooping Crane and near-threatened Lesser Flamingo to demonstrate the massive continental corridors over which migratory birds fly at great risk to their species.
Bondar reveals the birds from nesting thru chicks’ pre-flight days to their first flight and their first journey as she composed their portraits – on foot and in plane and helicopter for land and aerial patterns. Over a million images captured and sifted through to “determine which ones best represented the bird behaviour and their differences”.
“The images allow for self-interpretation. The combination of Art and Science create a visual story.”
Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight is available online through Amazon, Figure.1 publishing, Indigo and Barnes & Noble.
Sales of the book support The Roberta Bondar Foundation. The Foundation recognizes the importance of building and maintaining the relationship between humans and nature.
Niagara Parks
Niagara Gazette .com
Sep 23, 2024
Patterns & Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive launches at Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory
Running to Dec. 8 at the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, Dr. Roberta Bondar’s new photography exhibit, Patterns & Parallels Patterns & Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive, offers a compelling look at the migratory patterns and challenges faced by the Endangered Whooping Crane, Near Threatened Lesser Flamingo and Piping Plover. It features Bondar’s breathtaking images taken from the air and land along with NASA images from space.
“The exhibit is also a key part of the Roberta Bondar Foundation’s Space For Birds Project, which uses photography to create a visual narrative that helps us understand the biodiversity of nature and the impact of human actions and climate change on bird migration and habitat loss.”
The exhibit continues to other venues in Ontario before moving across Canada over the next two years.
Complementing this Travelling Exhibition, Patterns & Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive is Bondar’s new book Space for Birds; Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight that will also be available in the gift shop of the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory.
Bob McDonald
Quirks & Quarks, CBC
Sept 21, 2024
An astronaut takes a bird’s eye view of migration and more…
Interviewing Dr. Roberta Bondar about her new book, Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight, McDonald follows her training as a wildlife photographer after her astronaut career to her latest project curating hand-picked photos from space, along with her ground and airborne portrait captures, of two important bird species, the near-threatened Lesser Flamingo and the endangered Whooping Crane to bring a new perspective on migration.
Through the interview, Dr. Bondar reveals migratory birds as incredible animals flying long trips, over great, hazardous distances that are often begun when the youngest to fly may be less than a year old. The book captures it all. Start to end of trip and everything else in between! How they mange. How they know what to do where, to deal with human impact.
Why these portraits? Dr. Bondar states her desire to compose the photograph and relationships between land and water that would draw people into the image to ask questions that Science can answer.
Why the space images? Dr. Bondar included the edge of the earth in the space shots to remind people we are on a planet ! To reveal our thin atmosphere, the blackness of space around us, and to capture the land and water flight corridors over which these birds fly. Corridors so large they cannot be captured in one photograph. That from space you cannot see Life. For people to realize how remarkable and precious are the lives around us; to value how these other remarkable lives add beauty and information to ours.
Available now:
Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight
Dr. R. L. Bondar
10,000 Birds
Sept 17, 2024
Guest Post by Dr. Roberta L. Bondar, Author of “Space for Birds”
In her guest post for 10,000 Birds, Dr. Bondar restates her purpose in writing her new book Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight.
Dr. Bondar shares a visual story of two extraordinary avian species, one from each side of the globe, through the three perspectives of space, from the air, and from the surface. Her premise is that if you love something, you will want to protect it.
Dr. Bondar includes these avian examples from her own camera’s point of view on Earth’s surface, her aerial view from above their flight, and the view from space that reveals the massive breadth of the continental migrations of these two remarkable species – the Whooping Crane and the Lesser Flamingo.
Her new work reflects her deep and considered passion of how to share her view of the world – as “an emotional connection to the natural world of Earth, by stimulating entry into a frame that is artistically composed to intrigue the human brain … to ask questions, … to find answers in science.”
Available now:
Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight
Collect SPACE News
Sept 17, 2024
‘Space for Birds’:
Astronaut Roberta Bondar captures avian habitats from Earth, in air and on orbit
An in-depth interview with Dr. Roberta Bondar about her new book, Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight.
The article captures how Dr. Bondar’s view of our planet from space spurred her on return to capture various natural environments to share their importance to our lives as human beings and how the absence of its sounds spurred her on to follow some migratory birds and their unmarked flight corridors.
Dr. Roberta Bondar poses with her photos of the Lesser Flamingo, part of the AMASS (Avian Migration Aerial, Surface, Space) research project and her new book, Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight.
The interview explains the double meaning of “Space for Birds” by which Dr Bondar means the need to give birds their space to live, and also means that although we can’t see birds from space, they are important flight path travellers to Earthlings.
“One of the things I wanted to do with my spaceflight was to have some kind of a visual story … a story that talked about the life forms that were living on the planet that I couldn’t see.”
Not a book to be pigeon-holed as a bird book but rather a book that shows birds as they appear as we see them on the grounds of our planet but also reveal them from above their flight in aerial view in groups and patterns and then capture from space how their habitat’s features reveal the thousands of ‘unmarked’ but changing lands and waterways and lengths these animals travel to survive through the decades.
Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight captures 12 years of work for:
* Surface level photographs for close-up species detail
* Helicopter views that capture avian patterns and habitat difficulties
* Spaceflight reveals of broad slices and swaths of the continental forms these species navigate.
Emily Snow
TheCollector.com
Aug 29, 2024
Dr. Roberta Bondar: Intertwining Art and Science
Emily Snow sat down with Dr. Roberta Bondar to discuss her upcoming book, Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight, available on September 17, 2024.
“I looked at migratory birds because they cross boundaries the way we do as astronauts—without passports, we float over boundaries…. And birds teach us so much.”
Snow digs through the many stages and interests in Dr. Bondar’s life that have brought her to producing this work. She leads Canada’s first female astronaut and the world’s first neurologist in space from her childhood fascination with birds and dreams of flight, through the global recognition for her space medicine research, nature photography, and environmental advocacy.
All these paths lead to Dr. Bondar’s vision as Scientist and Artist on view in her upcoming book, Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight, available on September 17, 2024.
Niagara Butterfly Conservatory
Niagara Falls, ON
August 26, 2024
On the Move!
The Roberta Bondar Foundation exhibit, Patterns & Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive, is migrating to the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory!
With its stories and depictions of at-risk migratory species affected by habitat changes, the Patterns & Parallels exhibit underscores the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory’s focus on the importance of Conservation and Habitat and the Niagara Parks‘ commitment to Environmental Stewardship.
The exhibit will run from August 31 to December 8 and is included with general admission.
Patterns & Parallels is the current Travelling Exhibition and Learning Experience [TELE] and a core program of The Roberta Bondar Foundation’s international Space for Birds project.
Complementing this TELE is Dr. Bondar’s new book, Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight, that will be available September 17, 2024. More detail & book pre-order access. It will also be available in the gift shop of the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory.
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Aug. 28, 2024
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The Roberta Bondar Foundation
Toronto, ON
July 18, 2024
Brilliant Bird Book Bulletin! This Just in –
Contact information to Request Interviews with Dr. Bondar is included in this press release.
For more detail & book pre-order access
This book complements the Travelling Exhibition [TELE], Patterns & Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive.
educationnewscanada.com
Toronto, ON
July 8, 2024
Exploring at-risk bird species through the lens at Humber
On May 15th, Dr. Bondar visited the Humber College Lakeshore Campus to deliver a presentation and attend the opening reception of her photography exhibition, Patterns and Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive, hosted by the Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre at Humber College.
This Education News Canada article discusses the themes and goals of Patterns and Parallels, as well as Roberta’s presentation on the threatened and at-risk bird species that are featured in the exhibition.
The exhibition will be displayed at the Humber Fashion Institute at 3166 Lake Shore Blvd. West until July 26th. This is the first time the exhibition has been on display in the GTA, and it will be accessible for free to large numbers of students and the general community.
SooToday.com
Sault Ste. Marie, ON
June 21, 2024
Roberta Bondar’s new book is a space to learn about birds
This article announces Dr. Roberta Bondar’s forthcoming new book, the result of a decade of study and photographic coverage of migratory species and the perils they face. Space for Birds: Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight explores the continental, hazardous lives and environments of North America’s endangered Whooping Crane and Africa’s near-threatened Lesser Flamingo.
The SooToday article describes the photographic illustration of the birds’ habitats and flights from surface, aerial, and space sight lines. Commentary includes comments on the story narrative, its unique perspectives, and reference to the key illustrations from this work currently in the complementary travelling exhibition, Patterns & Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive.
To pre-order Dr. Bondar’s Space for Birds; Patterns and Parallels of Beauty and Flight.
Related Article:
Sudbury.com Sudbury, ON June 23, 2024
BEYOND LOCAL: Roberta Bondar’s new book is a space to learn about birds
Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, ON
May 4, 2024
Witnessing Resilience: Patterns & Parallels Showcase
From May 6 to July 26, 2024, the Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre at Humber Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning will welcome “Patterns and Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive”, from the Roberta Bondar Foundation.
“Partnering with the Roberta Bondar Foundation to showcase this exhibition exemplifies our commitment to artistic expression while championing environmental stewardship.”
Nadine Finlay, Curator and Academic Manager, Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre.
The exhibition features large, dramatic colour images taken by Dr. Bondar and selected NASA space images, video installations, and QR codes for onsite visitor access to digital learning from animation, audio, and fieldwork video.
Exhibition Features + Hours: Patterns & Parallels: The Great Imperative to Survive
This Travelling Exhibition and Learning Experience [TELE] is one of the many Roberta Bondar Foundation initiatives “to connect people to the natural world, inspiring curiosity, respect for and conservation of the environment while building healthier lives.”
Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, ON
May 4, 2024