Bachelor of science in mechanical eingineering from the University of Calgary, 1976; master of science in mechanical engineering from MIT, 1978; doctorate of medicine from McGill University, 1982; master of business administration from MIT Sloan School of Management, 1998; was selected as backup for STS-41G; although not officially a member of the 1998 class (NASA-17), he participated in mission specialist training in the same period as his Canadian colleque Bjarni Tryggvason; hobbies: Squash, playing the piano, spending time with his family, flying; trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow and became certified as a Flight Engineer for the Soyuz spacecraft (2004); served as backup Flight Engineer to European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Roberto Vittori for the Soyuz TMA-6 taxi mission to the ISS (April 2005); returned to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and began ISS Expedition crew training.