“Just Say Yes” and other wisdom

Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024
$34.95  /  9781771624206

An Interview with Bob McDonald
by Cathalynn Labonté-Smith

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Three motorcycles riding in a triangular formation on the Sunshine Coast’s Highway 101 are hypnotic as they sway into the sinuous twists and curves, flanked by cubist cliffs on the right and gnarled arbutus trees clinging to life on sheer vertical plunges to the ocean below on the left. The couple riding cozily in front of me have me wondering where Bob McDonald and his fiancé, Jennifer Hartley, are while riding his Honda Gold Wing, the Cadillac of touring motorcycles, on the Pacific Coast Highway 101 to California. Are they breathing in the smoke the raging fires? Enjoying adult beverages on a patio overlooking the surf of the Pacific Ocean?

Perhaps, they’re already on their way back to Bob’s home in Victoria? That’s where he moved to in 2011 from Toronto, a decision for which he has no regrets. Maybe they took a side trip to secretly elope in Las Vegas? He confided in our interview that they were dispensing with a big wedding and would maybe elope to Vegas.

After reading McDonald’s memoir, Just Say Yes, to be released in September 2024, I found him refreshingly spontaneous and unpredictable, so elopement isn’t off the table. I knew from having interviewed him previously on the subject of his nonfiction book, The Future is Now: Solving the Climate Crisis with Today’s Technology, that he’s one of the most contagiously positive and enthusiastic people I’ve ever met, and, likely, on the planet.

Reading his book is like hopping onto the passenger seat of his motorbike and taking a long ride with him as your fascinating, tireless tour guide through the most interesting places and times not only in his life, but also in the world and the cosmos. You will learn many things about McDonald that you didn’t know about him in his new book, and he hasn’t held back.

His dream when he was growing up in Orillia, Ontario, the child of an alcoholic, abusive foundry worker, was to be a pilot and ultimately an astronaut. He has realized some of that dream by being in the air cadets, taking flying lessons, and experiencing zero gravity in an airplane. Who knows? He may score a ride out of Earth’s atmosphere on a commercial space ride yet! He certainly didn’t imagine that he would become a science journalist.

It’s unlikely I will go to Egypt, and I’ve only been to a few of the places that he has, but Bob took me to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo with his vivid and enthusiastic description, so splendidly typical of the book:

The life-sized statue is of a young man sitting in a lotus position with hands in his lap, the left one holding a partially unrolled piece of white papyrus, the right positioned to hold a stylus. The body is flesh-coloured, the hair is dark, and the eyes are inlaid with rock crystals, giving him a penetrating stare. He is neither smiling nor frowning. The sculptor caught a moment in time when the writer is deep in thought and just about to commit to writing the words. I knew that moment well, having struggled through writing documentaries and newspaper articles, waiting for the right words to flow out of some distant part of my brain, trickle down my arms and become visible on paper. Suddenly, just as I was setting out on a new career as a modern scribe, I felt a direct connection to a person from more than 2,000 years ago who expressed himself through the written word, and I felt honoured to be part of such a long line of scribes.

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The primary reason he wrote Just Say Yes was: “Inspiration for young people. If you just say yes, you can do it. Finish what you start. Don’t get discouraged. Anybody can succeed. People like me often don’t believe they can do what I’ve done because they feel they’re not good enough. I have always felt that way but I did it anyway.”

Another reason he wrote the book, was to share that having experienced sexual abuse as a young child by his father and an older friend, he wants others who have been sexually abused to know that:

You can get on with your life. Don’t give your abuser your power. Today is where you live. The sexual abuse affected me in my relationships, but I became my own person. You don’t have to be a victim all your life. I have never gone public with this before. Report it. Don’t let it ruin your life; move forward.

Bob feels that he’s in a good place now and ready to make a commitment to his partner, who he met at the Space Canada conference in Toronto fourteen years ago. “Feeling comfortable in a relationship was when I started to feel unsafe in the past. Your home is no longer a safe haven. It forces you to become independent quickly. You feel strongest alone,” he says.

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His advice to writers is: “Give it time. Don’t write until you’re ready. Put on your writer’s hat, then put on your editor’s hat.”  His own process is to set aside a block of time to do the writing without interruption.

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His hobbies are chasing full eclipses (he’s seen seven), sailing (he’s owned five yachts), and travel, mostly by motorcycle (he’s owned an impressive twenty-two). As part of his work, he interviews Nobel Prize winners such as the late Stephen Hawking. Astronaut Chris Hadfield is a friend and bandmate. He’s earned numerous awards and honorary doctorates despite dropping out of university, has produced and hosted many shows, including Wonderstruck, and still has his weekly show Quirks & Quarks on CBC at the age of seventy-three. He has recently produced a documentary recently, Bending Light, on eclipses, and is a household name in Canada. So what else would he like to accomplish? “A trip to Spain in July. Next summer on a cruise to Iceland, I’m going to be a speaker for Adventure Canada. Also, I want to interview Elon Musk about Tesla and SpaceX,” he says. Perhaps, he’d also like to catch up with Richard Branson.

But ultimately when it comes to life, he has “No expectations. Just let it happen.”

[Editor’s Note: Bob McDonald is on the guest author list for, and will be of the speakers at, the Whistler Writers Festival, taking place October 17 – 20, 2024.]

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Cathalynn Cindy Labonté-Smith grew up in Southwestern Alberta and moved to Vancouver, B.C., to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She is the fourth generation on her father’s side to live in British Columbia.

After graduation, she worked as a freelance journalist until present. She became a technical writer in wireless communication and other high-tech industries, earning a Certificate in Technical Writing from Simon Fraser University. She later went to UBC to complete a Bachelor of Education (Secondary) and taught English, journalism, and other subjects at Vancouver high schools. She currently lives in Gibsons and North Vancouver, B.C. She is the founder and president of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society. She is the director of the SCWES Art & Words Festival.

[Editor’s Note: Cathalynn Labonté-Smith has previously written about the Sunshine Coast Tale Trail for The British Columbia Review.]