Advertisement

Chris Hadfield's flight suit found in Toronto thrift store

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.

"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.

The suit looks just like the one the former commander of the International Space Station is seen wearing on the back cover of his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.

​Hadfield rose to fame during his stint aboard the ISS — capturing the public's attention with pictures and short videos which included a zero-gravity performance of the David Bowie song Space Oddity. He retired from the Canadian Space Agency in 2013.

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.