Episode XXIX: Epilouge

Hello there, my dear readers. I must apologize for my nine-month absence from this place. It seems time had slipped away from me. I'm back, though, with one last entry.

February 2, 2009 is a day that no one involved with Operation: First Contact will soon forget. One this day, all of our efforts came to fruition. From a small electronics lab at Humber College, we made history.

For me, that morning started much too early. Waking up at 5:30 in the morning, I quickly showered and drove off to the school, grabbing coffee and Timbits on the way. We all met up at the school for 6:30, and made sure that all the last-minute tasks were completed. The room seemed empty at 6:30, but we knew that in a mere couple of hours it would be filled with family, friends, and the media.

As the morning went on, people started to trickle into the room. Professors, administrators, and people from the school's marketing department. Humber's security was there in full force, making sure that only our friends, family, guests, and the media were admitted into the lab.

I was super nervous about the events that were about to transpire later that day. The entire country was going to be there watching us. What if something didn't work? What if we couldn't make our contact? We'd look like fools in front of everyone.

I get nervous pretty easily. The day before our contact, I did a live interview on CBC Newsworld. In a state of near-panic, I used the phrase, "A lot of people want to know how one urinates in space." I used the word "urinate" on live TV. That was just with the CBC watching me. The day of contact, though, representatives and reporters from many different networks and news organizations were present. In short, we were graced with the presence of CBC, CTV, Global, The Canadian Press, The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun, OMNI, CFRB, and countless other outlets. Those who could not fit in the room were asked to go downstairs into the reception area, where our contact would be played live on a big screen.


There was a really strange energy in the air that morning. Anxiety, nervousness, and excitement seemed to be the predominant themes of the day. As the countdown ticked down, Gino and Mark Rector gave the crowd little bits of information about the project.

At 12:33, we were down to the wire. We had one minute left. As we opened up the squelch on the radio, the only sound in the room was the static coming from our radio. The room was jammed packed full of people, but no one made a sound.

"T-minus six, four, three, two, one. We're live." Mark Rector said into his microphone.

Gino spoke into the radio. "NA1SS, this is VA3JUV, Humber College, checking in for scheduled contact. Do you copy?"

Nothing but static.

Five seconds later, he tried again.

"I have you a little bit weak. Can you try again?" was the response from Dr. Sandra Magnus. We did it! We made contact! At that moment, it was like the weight of the world was lifted right off our shoulders. We did it!

Continuing on, we started asking our questions. If you're interested, here's an mp3 file of our contact. It's one thing to read the questions and answers, but it's a whole other thing to listen to the contact.

Click here to play the contact.

We'd like to congratulate our contest winners, Mike Bodnar, Bruce Pena, Sheree Pickering, Sanjeev Singh for their awesome questions.

After the contact was done, we all filed downstairs into the reception hall, where we spent the better part of an hour answering questions for all the different news outlets. There was food and coffee, but I don't think any of us had the chance to enjoy it. As soon as one interview was done, we were whisked off to the next.

The next day, Gino and Mark made an appearance on CTV's Canada AM. I got to be on the The Daily Planet, and Paul and I had the honour of speaking to Sandie Rinaldo.

In the days following the contact, we took some time to ourselves to relax. Then one morning, we got a surprise call from Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman in space. She invited us to a lecture she was giving at the University of Toronto. It was a pleasure and an honour to meet her.

Not long after that, we got a chance to meet Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff. Soon after that, we took a bus full of telecommunications students to Ottawa, where we met Marc Garneau, Canada's first astronaut.

Things have been fairly quiet since then, but as I write this, we're all getting ready to make the trip back to Ottawa, where we will be attending an awards gala hosted by Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame.

The Hall does a lot of good for Canada, and for the telecom industry in General. As I've said before, please visit their website. Look around their virtual hall of fame. You'd be surprised what you'll find in there!

Well, my friends, this is it. I want to sincerely thank every single one of you who has supported our project in any way. I can not adequately express my gratitude to you.

Who knows where things will go from here? The one thing that we've taken away from this is that you never know what the future holds. We started out as students who knew nothing about anything, and in a few short years, we contact space. None of us could have predicted that.

As Roberta Bondar said to me, "Reach for the stars. I'll see you there."