All Your Latest News

Astronaut Robert Thirsk told University of Calgary students and faculty on Monday that ‘dreams don’t come right by wishing on a star.’ (Terri Trembath/CBC) Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk visited his ancient alma mater Monday to pick up the degree he was awarded while in orbit.

Thirsk was living on the International Space Station for six months when he was awarded the doctor of laws degree last July.

The University of Calgary engineering graduate travelled more than 125 million kilometres and established a Canadian record for time spent in space. He returned to Earth last Dec. 1 on a Russian spacecraft, which landed in Kazakhstan.

Robert Thirsk, top, of Canada, Frank De Winne of Belgium, centre, and Roman Romanenko of Russia board the Soyuz-FG rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last May as they set out for the International Space Station.
(Anatoly Maltsev, pool/Associated Press)In Calgary on Monday, Thirsk told faculty and students that the benefits of Canada’s involvement in space exploration can be found far and wide.

“We make money in space,” he said. “In a typical year the Canadian government invests $300 million on space programs. In a typical year … space companies reap revenues of $3 billion.”

And the investment in space-related technologies has benefits that aren’t limited to the aerospace sector, Thirsk said.

“You don’t have to look any further than Calgary,” he said. “Go to Foothills Hospital. You’ll find NeuroArm there. NeuroArm is a surgical instrument, which performs surgery on patients’ brains which surgeons with their limited dexterity cannot do.”

Thirsk encouraged students to dream huge dreams — and to build them on a sold education.

“Dreams don’t come right by wishing on a star,” the astronaut said. “I’d encourage young Canadians to launch their dreams on a solid educational foundation.”

“It’s not unrealistic that a graduate of University of Calgary should glide aboard the International Space Station and perhaps one day walk on the surface of Mar. It’s easily within the realm of possibility.”

Thirsk said six months is a long time to spend in space and he is pleased to be back on Earth. He said he watched the lights of Calgary pass by beneath him many times while he was in orbit.

Dongfan “Greg” Chung was convicted in July of six counts of economic espionage and other federal charges for having 300,000 pages of sensitive papers in his home. (Christina House/The Orange County Register/Associated Press)

A Chinese-born engineer was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for hoarding sensitive information about the U.S. space shuttle that prosecutors say he intended to share with China.

The case against Dongfan “Greg” Chung was the United States’ first trial on economic espionage charges. The 74-year-ancient former Boeing Co. engineer was convicted in July of six counts of economic espionage and other federal charges for keeping 300,000 pages of sensitive papers in his home.

Before sentencing Chung in Santa Ana, Calif., U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said he didn’t know exactly what information Chung passed to China. “But what I do know is what he did, and what he did pass, hurt our national security and it hurt Boeing,” the judge said.

Carney said Chung’s scheme with the Chinese government spanned 30 years. During brief remarks, Chung begged the judge to give him a lenient sentence.

“Your honour, I am not a spy, I am only an ordinary man,” he said, adding that he had brought the Boeing documents home to write a book.

“I like this country …Your honour, I beg your pardon and let me live with my family peacefully.”

Despite Chung’s age, prosecutors requested a 20-year sentence, in part to send a message to other would-be spies.

But the judge said he couldn’t place a value on the amount of information that Chung stole and couldn’t determine exactly how much the breaches hurt Boeing and the nation. He also cited the engineer’s age and frail health in going with a sentence of 15 years and eight months.

“It’s very hard having to make a choice where someone is going to have to spend the rest of their adult life in prison,” Carney said. “I take no comfort or satisfaction in that.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples noted in sentencing papers that Chung amassed a personal wealth of more than $3 million US while betraying his adopted country.

“The [People's Republic of China] is bent on stealing sensitive information from the United States and shows no sign of relenting,” Staples wrote. “Only strong sentences offer any hope of dissuading others from helping the PRC get that technology.”

Chung’s attorney, Thomas Bienert Jr., has said his client will appeal.

The government said investigators found papers stacked throughout Chung’s house that included sensitive information about a booster rocket fuelling system — documents that employees were ordered to lock away at the end of each day. The government said Boeing invested $50 million in the technology over a five-year period.

During the non-jury trial, Chung’s lawyers argued that he may have violated Boeing policy by bringing the papers home, but he didn’t break any laws by doing so, and the U.S. government couldn’t prove he had given secret information to China.

In his ruling, Carney wrote that the notion that Chung was merely a pack rat was “ludicrous” and said the evidence showed that he had been passing information to Chinese officials as a spy.

The government believes Chung started spying for the Chinese in the late 1970s, a few years after he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and was hired by Rockwell.

Chung worked for Rockwell until it was bought by Boeing in 1996. He stayed with the company until he was laid off in 2002, then was brought back a year later as a consultant. He was fired when the FBI started its investigation in 2006.

Ian Brown won the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction on Monday for his book The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search For His Disabled Son. (Charles Taylor Prize)A personal tale about a father connecting with his son has triumphed over a trio of significant historical figures, as journalist Ian Brown’s The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son took the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction on Monday.

Toronto-based writer and broadcaster Brown was awarded the $25,000 honour for his acclaimed book, which tells the tale of his disabled 13-year-ancient son, Walker, who has a rare genetic condition that — among its many symptoms — leaves him unable to speak or eat normally and prone to hitting himself.

“This is an enormous honour, pleasure, thrill. It’s impossible for me to really reckon I have won next to these fine colleagues: Ken, Daniel and professor English,” Brown said at the downtown Toronto award gala on Monday, acknowledging his fellow nominees.

“Narrative non-fiction is being ignored these days in favour of quicker, shorter blurts,” he noted. “I reckon that narrative non-fiction will come back and this prize keeps it there.”

In January, Brown also won the $40,000 British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction — Canada’s richest non-fiction prize — for The Boy in the Moon.

Historical portraits

This year’s Charles Taylor Prize contest had initially appeared like a battle of major biographies, with works about former prime minister Pierre Trudeau (Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000 by John English), separatist leader René Lévesque (René Lévesque by Daniel Poliquin) and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst by Kenneth Whyte) competing.

The finalists for the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction, from left, The Boy in the Moon, Just Watch Me, Rene Levesque and The Uncrowned King. (Random House Canada, Knopf Canada, Penguin Group Canada, Random House)Brown’s The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son, was the only memoir. It was chosen by a three-member jury that included journalist Andrew Cohen, celebrated translator Sheila Fischman and historian Tim Cook, who was 2009′s winner.

As finalists, English, Poliquin and Whyte each receive $2,000.

Presented annually, the Charles Taylor Prize recognizes a Canadian author who has written a book that “demonstrates a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style and a subtlety of thought and perception.”

Named for the late writer and former Globe and Mail correspondent who died in 1997, past winners have included Richard Gwyn, Carol Shields, Wayne Johnston, Isabel Huggan and J.B. MacKinnon.

Personal tale goes public

The Boy in the Moon had its origins in an essay about Walker and a 2007 multimedia series Brown, an award-winning newspaper and magazine writer, made for the Globe and Mail.

“It’s a scary book to pick up,” Brown acknowledged.

“You look at it and reckon ‘Man, I don’t know if I can get through this. It’s about some small kid who’s in a terrible way.’ But then you realize that his struggle is in some ways parallel to our struggles,” he said.

‘With Walker, you can just be there and it is right. It reminded me that the truest tale is the tale that is right there: the tale that you honestly experience as opposed to what you reckon you should experience.’— Ian Brown

The seasoned feature-writer, who often admits to toiling with the craft of writing, struggled against a mountain of material he had amassed — from frank descriptions of Walker’s many aliments and “ethnographic descriptions of the emergency department, because I’d been there so often,” to “interactions, visits to doctors, medical histories [and] genetic science,” he recounted.

“I didn’t know for a long time what to place in the book… I didn’t know whether it would be fascinating to anyone. I finally solved that in writing it when I started to pay attention to what Walker did,” Brown said.

“With Walker, you can just be there and it is right. It reminded me that the truest tale is the tale that is right there: the tale that you honestly experience as opposed to what you reckon you should experience.”

Brown said he has told Walker of the critical acclaim The Boy in the Moon has received and showed him images of the book.

“He’s not completely unaware of it,” he said.

“I just talk and he knows that we’re hanging out together, engaging. For that time, what I say is irrelevant, but that I am saying it and that he can hear it and that he can respond makes us equals. I don’t know if it’s a liberation for him, but for me, it’s fantastic liberation.”