Media 2022

Toronto Ontario
innovatingcanada.ca/mediaplanet.com

Launched online today on innovatingcanada.ca and in the National Post, the Engineering Our Future campaign.

Dr. Bondar details the need for and value of Diversity in education, cultural life experience, team collaborations, and group fieldwork.

“The Engineering Our Future campaign aims to bridge the knowledge gaps around equity in engineers, types of engineering, and the importance of the industry to Canada as a whole.”

International Space Station
NASA

The latest report about our AMASS / Space for Birds project is featured in today’s ISS Research News. Images are part of the space station’s Crew Earth Observation (CEO) project that has supported AMASS since 2016, by photographing locations of bird migration across the globe, for example, along the North American migratory path of the Whooping Crane.

The Space Station Research article outlines the international scope of AMASS, designed by Principal Investigator and Project Lead, Dr. Roberta Bondar, bringing its growth and achievement into current focus. Canadian astronaut Dr. David Saint-Jacques shares his point of view as a space station’s Crew Earth Observer who contributes to Bondar’s ground and aerial documentation.

Already the project’s bird migration images & species information are incorporated in the CSA’s Exploring Earth, an educational project using photos from space on an interactive map.

The Roberta Bondar Foundation’s AMASS project will host future exhibits and educational events. Its research group is creating online story maps to provide information about the biology and survival perils for each of seven species, along with images, video, and maps of land use changes.

What can a collaboration of perspectives produce? Check out the StoryMap of the Lesser Flamingo.

Northern Ontario Diaries

Toronto Ontario
Harbourfront Centre

Ten Northern Ontario personalities serve up ten individual story slices from their lives in the auditory travel experience, Northern Ontario Diaries. Each person relates their own story in their own voice – told from different locations around Harbourfront Centre / Ontario Square – QR-code activated and/or speaker broadcast.

Dr Roberta Bondar tells her Moon Story as she joins fellow Northern Ontarians Patrick Hunter, Stephanie Piché, Barbara Nolan, Adrian Sutherland, Eva Bonjour-Liss & Luke Dinan, Annette Pateman, Jean E. Pendziwol, Waubgeshig Rice, and Wayne Taipale.

Toronto Ontario
The Roberta Bondar Foundation

To mark the 50th Anniversary of the Status of Women Report, Dr. Roberta Bondar lends her voice to Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health.

As the world’s first neurologist & the first Canadian woman in space, Dr. Bondar encourages us to continue the fight for gender equality so that gender and race do not dismiss opportunity.

Ottawa Ontario
Tourism Canada

The official Tourism Canada YouTube channel features a new short animation “Helmed by the creators of the Broadway musical Come From Away, Irene Sankoff and David Hein” featuring the voices of well-known Canadians.

Your Challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to locate Roberta’s character and to recognize her voice!

How many Canadian references do you “get”?
Some helpful clues…

Students across Canada can now participate in Dr. Roberta Bondar’s nature photography challenge in their journey to EcoSchools certification.

EcoSchools Canada is teaming up with The Roberta Bondar Foundation to give students across the country the opportunity to support their EcoSchools certification application by participating in the school-based Bondar Challenge. The nature photography challenge is inspired by the remarkable work of Dr. Roberta Bondar, the world’s first neurologist and first Canadian woman in space, distinguished astronaut, medical doctor, scientist, and photographer.

This partnership is being launched on Dr. Bondar’s 75th birthday, and celebrates her ongoing contribution to inquiry, creativity, and conservation of the natural world.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Dr. Bondar and her Foundation to make the Bondar Challenge available to schools across the country as a part of the EcoSchools certification program. Providing students and educators an opportunity to connect to nature, wildlife and our environment, is critical to developing a strong foundation for environmental learning, advocacy and action.”

– Lindsay Bunce, Executive Director, EcoSchools Canada

The Roberta Bondar Foundation has been inspiring and informing individuals and communities about the beautiful and complex web of life on our planet for 11 years, and the Bondar Challenge is a perfect example of its approach—one that combines both science and art to promote curiosity, creative expression, and respect for the natural environment.

As the largest bilingual, environmental certification program for kindergarten to grade 12 schools in the country, EcoSchools Canada hopes to invite more schools to join the Bondar Challenge by making the program available to schools across the country and allowing schools to claim points for the Challenge in their online EcoSchools certification application.

“This is a wonderful way to expand the reach of our program to be even more accessible, and we are pleased to join forces with EcoSchools Canada in our efforts to promote curiosity, creativity and conservation. Getting youth outside to explore the world around them through photography contributes to their overall wellness and mental health.”

– Dr. Roberta Bondar, President, The Roberta Bondar Foundation

If you are a student or teacher who would like to know more about how to participate in the Bondar Challenge with EcoSchools Canada, please visit the Bondar Challenge web page.

To learn more about The Roberta Bondar Foundation, you can visit therobertabondarfoundation.org.

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For more information about this initiative, please contact:
EcoSchools Canada
Galen Drinnan
Communications Manager
gdrinnan@ecoschools.ca

 
The Roberta Bondar Foundation
Joan Hamilton
Director, RBF Board of Directors
jm4hamilton@gmail.com

1927-2020

It is with deep sadness, we announce the death of our belovèd Professor Betty I. Roots. An accomplished scientist, photographer and intrepid traveller, Dr. Betty Roots lived and died fearlessly, surviving V2 rockets, desert adventures, titanium knees, and more.

Betty (NOT Elizabeth) practiced attention to detail in her well-received scientific, photographic and editing work. Her unpublished memoirs paint a personal and professional history ripe with humour, curiosity and, inevitably for a female scientist of her time, gender bias that diminished the options open to women at the end of WWII, and decades later.

From BSc (Special Honours) to PhD in Zoology (Comparative Physiology), University College, University of London, England she cut a trail through decades of academic appointments in departments of Physiology and Biophysics, Neurosciences, & Zoology from London, England to California to Illinois to Toronto, Ontario. She was as at home intriguing children with the wonders of Science as she was leading her colleagues as first female Chair of Zoology at the University of Toronto.

Her work and leadership were acknowledged in awards from the prestigious DSc degree from the University of London, England, for her achievements (research in comparative physiology and neurobiology) and numerous other honours, Fellowships, and medals.

Betty was an active Founding Director of this, her much beloved Roberta Bondar Foundation. Roberta, first PhD student, and her loyal friend for over 50 years was a source of inspiration, energy and pride. Full obituary notice.

With gratitude, we acknowledge the condolences, articles and notes from:
Neil Macpherson, Department of Cell & Systems Biology, University of Toronto
In Memoriam: Professor Betty Ida Roots

Toronto Ontario
The Roberta Bondar Foundation

Check out our latest newsletter to see how we:

• celebrate the return to Canada of many Migratory Birds
• recap Dr. Bondar’s international research project, AMASS using Dr. Bondar’s images from surface and air plus imagery from ISS to highlight the importance of Protecting Space for Birds
• outline our exciting new Online Bondar Challenge program
• link you to new and free learning materials & activities.

Toronto Ontario
The Roberta Bondar Foundation

Today we’ve launched our Online Bondar Challenge – to give youth, their families and the public a chance to explore some of the acclaimed learning resources and activities we created for schools and several types of outdoor camps.

This selection is now available online FOR FREE.
Downloadable.
Integrative and Engaging

All are welcome to use our resources. Being indoors and trying to cover lessons can be tough for both kids and parents/guardians.

C’mon! Connect with the world thru #NaturePhotography. Get outside — in a yard or on a walk (with physical distancing). Discover how science, art, math, and language are woven into a single program.

Only the Optional Competition has a fee.

#Education #Homeschool #ExperientialLearning #STEAMlearning #InquiryBasedLearning