Topic: Chris Hadfield's flight suit found in a thrift shop
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 42981 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 02-27-2015 09:27 PM
A flight suit once worn by astronaut Chris Hadfield is apparently now the property of a Toronto doctor who found it in — of all places — a local thrift store, CBC News reports.
"I thought, wow, what is a flight suit like that doing up there?" Dr. Julielynn Wong told CBC News, recalling how she stumbled upon the bright blue jumpsuit in one of the many second-hand stores on Queen Street West.
Then she saw the name stitched on the left-hand side: Chris Hadfield.
"My jaw just dropped. I said, 'I can't believe it.'"
She says she bought it for $40, marked down from $80.
...Wong is Facebook friends with Hadfield, so she sent a picture of the suit she had bought and they exchanged messages.
"He started asking questions. He said, 'Well, does it have a puncture marks in the badge?'"
It did. And other details also matched up. Hadfield said it was, indeed, his old suit.
"That's a mystery to me as to how it got there," he wrote.
posted 02-28-2015 09:24 AM
Mystery solved: Here is a reply I received from Evan Hadfield regarding the flight suit after I made an inquiry through Chris Hadfield's Facebook page.
We accidentally sent the wrong box to charity on our move back to Canada. - Evan
onesmallstep Member
Posts: 1310 From: Staten Island, New York USA Registered: Nov 2007
posted 03-03-2015 03:17 PM
Aha! So Canada Post is absolved of any blame.
Wonder if any more valuables were in the box and if they were picked up by anyone at the same shop? They may pop up on eBay after this story.
I think the best ending would be for the good doctor to loan the suit to say, the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. Makes little sense keeping it tucked away in a corner of her house (unless she has a mannequin handy with the appropriate mustache, eh?).
BMckay Member
Posts: 3218 From: MA, USA Registered: Sep 2002
posted 03-03-2015 03:26 PM
With some help from astronauts and collectSPACE members, we were able to to get another "lost" flightsuit back to the rightful owner. The astronaut was happy, the thrift store was happy, an aviation museum was happy (donation went their way) and collectors were happy with the goodwill it created. It was fun figuring out who's it was. The collectSPACE member could have kept and sold it for much more then he paid for it so kudos for him.
So things like this happen, but I hope she at least asked Chris if he wanted it back.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 42981 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 03-03-2015 07:07 PM
Chris Hadfield's son, Evan, has provided a few more details about how the suit ended up in a thrift shop and what their intentions were for it originally in responses posted to Reddit.
We accidentally donated the wrong box to charity on our move back to Canada, it appears.
Our intention had been to loan it to a science centre, with all the other memorabilia of his. Regardless, I hope it still finds its way there somehow.
What else was in the box?
No clue, sad to say. We're not even sure which box it was that got donated. Moving 20+ years worth of stuff from Texas to Toronto immediately after returning from space has a way of losing track of some things.
posted 02-27-2015 09:27 PM
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