The Montreal Gazette reports today that Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté will begin his mission to space tomorrow morning at 3:14 am EST.

But, “Laliberté won’t conduct scientific experiments on the 12-day mission. Instead, he has vowed to raise global awareness about water conservation…”

“(Laliberté will) host a world first: a live entertainment show Oct. 9 from the space lab, 350 kilometres up. Laliberté …will orchestrate the show, titled Moving Stars and Earth for Water, from the space station. It will blend artistic performances or ‘poetic readings’ by celebrities in 14 cities, including Montreal. Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, U2, Shakira, Quebec singer Garou, composer A.R. Rahman, Quebec biologist Jean Lemire, singer Peter Gabriel and Cirque performers are to take part.”

While details are still being confirmed, it is expected that Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow will also be part of this program. (We will post more details on this when we have them.)

“The show is to be televised live by RDI, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s French-language all-news TV channel, as well as on the Internet at onedrop.org, the website of Laliberté’s charitable group.”

As I’ve noted previously, RDI, the French language cable television news channel operated by CBC/Radio-Canada is distributed on basic cable and satellite television to 9.8 million homes, including 2 million in Quebec, and is seen each week by a half-million English viewers.

An earlier campaign blog posting, ‘Cirque founder will promote water during space trip; Montreal concert planned’, can be read at http://www.canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=1742.

The Montreal Gazette article is at http://www.montrealgazette.com/travel/Cirque+Soleil+boss+heads+into+space/2044373/story.html.