Mother Teresa’s mission in Kolkata. Been there. Haiti after the earthquake. Done that. China? Central America? Africa? All that too.

“I like to go places that are hard,” Karen Cumming explains. “I don’t know why, but I do.”

This time, the 53-year-old former television journalist, now a high school teacher in Hamilton, has outdone herself.

Cumming is one of four Canadians with their sights set on going to Mars.

“How much wilder could you possibly get?” she told the Star.

The $6-billion Mars One project, based in the Netherlands, hopes to send the first four participants to Mars by 2025 and four more Mars-tronauts every two years after to build a colony on the Red Planet.

Here on Earth, it’s been culling the herd of more than 200,000 applicants and this week announced a short list of 100, including six Canadians. (Two of these, though living in Canada, are listed by Mars One under their country of origin.)

The Canadian quartet includes Cumming; Vancouver office manager Susan Higashio Weinreich, 42; Ben Criger, 28, who has a PhD in physics from the University of Waterloo; and teacher Joanna Hindle, 42, of Whistler, B.C.

The four were drawn to the project for different reasons. Adventure. Science. Romance. But they have the common traits of an appetite for adventure and an otherworldly hope and optimism.

They also share a common, and daunting, challenge: How do you tell your nearest and dearest that you’ve volunteered for a mission from which there is almost certainly no return?

Cumming has no husband, no kids. But she does have a brother and sister, friends, students. And a 94-year-old mother.

“Initially, she found it very difficult to wrap her head around,” Cumming says. “I had to explain everything and I had to do it well. It took her weeks to really digest it, but she’s come around.”

For Cumming, it appealed to her sense of adventure — as a teacher and as a journalist, the calling she says is still in her blood.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is the story of the century and it’s the assignment of a lifetime, to have the privilege of being the person who gets to document this journey for the rest of humanity.”

For Susan Higashio Weinreich, raising daughter Kaylie on her own made her, for most of her life, indispensable. Now that her daughter is grown, Higashio Weinreich’s adventurous streak can be given free rein.

She’s always hiked, backpacked, gone rock climbing. She has scuba dived in Hawaii, Belize, Cyprus. Last year, she travelled solo through Turkey.

“Some people may say these activities are risky,” says Higashio Weinreich, who for more domestic activities has been a Scout leader for 10 years and also volunteered at the Vancouver Olympics. “But that doesn’t really cross my mind.”

She’s always been fascinated by space. As a girl, she says, “I read all kinds of sci-fi books and was ecstatic when I received a telescope as a gift. I always longed to go to Space Camp, and when I took my daughter to Florida and went to the Kennedy Space Center for the first time, I almost cried with joy.”

In addition to Kaylie and grandson Spencer, she has four siblings, and both her parents are still living.

“I asked my daughter, ‘What would you say if I applied to go to Mars?’ and she replied, ‘Cool!’

“Then, when I told her that the mission was a one-way trip, she said, ‘Oh . . . ’ and was clearly disappointed.

“Then her eyes lit up and she looked at me and exclaimed, ‘But Mum, you’ll get to go on the most amazing adventure!’

“It means so much to me that my entire family behind me in my decision.”

In truth, she expected no less. Adventure runs in her family. Her Japanese great-grandfather “encouraged all of his children to learn English so that they could explore the world.

“My grandmother took my mum overseas to travel all throughout America at a time when it was unusual for young women to travel on their own. My two younger brothers and sister-in-law left home to live in Japan, and my sister just spent the last two summers in New Zealand and Australia respectively. But I am most inspired by my big brother, Tom, who has travelled all over the world to climb mountains.”

Ben Criger told the Star from Germany, where he’s doing post-doctoral research in quantum computing, that he’s never been particularly adventurous, never done any “skydiving, hang-gliding, bungee jumping or anything like that.

“I’ve never seen the appeal of an adventure where the journey is exciting but the destination is the same place you’ve always been.”

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Of the Canadians, Hamilton-born Criger is the most immersed in science. He got turned on to it, he says, “by Bill Nye the Science Guy.

“But there was another show that captured my interest when I was young. It was called Prisoners of Gravity . . . and it was just Rick Green doing pre-taped interviews with authors of science fiction. I don’t know why, but it fascinated me completely.”

For Criger, unmarried and childless but with a younger brother and parents still alive, it was a relatively easy choice to apply — “once I’d explained everything to my family and given them my word that, if I thought it would be unsafe, I would back out.

“They’re supportive. They’re not eager to get me off of the planet or anything, but they understand why somebody would do what I’m doing.”

Criger thinks there’s wisdom in building a team from a wide range of fields. “On a mission like this one, you don’t know in advance what skills will be required. Sending just one kind of person, whether it’s scientists, doctors, pilots or lumberjacks, would be a mistake. We should send people from as many different backgrounds as possible, both cultural and educational.”

In Mount Currie, B.C., Joanna Hindle, who also has no children, teaches at the Xet’olacw Community School of the Lil’wat Nation. Her late father was the mayor of Kelowna, B.C., where his free-spirited daughter spent her first 12 years.

Her brother Dan of Kelowna told the Star the Hindle children experienced the wonders of the world.

“We grew up with parents who thought there was no greater thrill in the year than some crazy adventure that we could get taken on. They weren’t always well planned, but that’s what made them adventures.

“There are definitely people within the family — my fiancée is one — who just don’t understand and don’t think it’s a good idea and (Joanna) is potentially not coming back.

“There are people in her life who simply don’t understand and may not accept the fact she would willingly leave us behind. I think that’s greedy of us, not supporting her.”

Most of her family and friends, he says, are “all gung-ho for her to go, cheering her on.”

And for a journey of this sort, it’s difficult not to support a candidate of such romantic bent that, in her video made for Mars One, she quoted the poet Longfellow.

“I give the first watch of the night,

To the red planet Mars.

The star of the unconquered will,

He rises in my breast,

Serene, and resolute, and still,

And calm, and self-possessed.”

That’s Joanna too, says her brother.

To Susan Higashio Weinreich, the mission has the potential to “unite the world for a common purpose.

“I am hopeful that the Mars One colony can show the world that people can live in harmony and peace, with every citizen being a contributing member of society. The colony is designed to be sustainable, with a small ecological footprint, and I hope that new technologies can be designed to create a more sustainable and greener Earth. We can learn so much from research, exploration and discovery on Mars and it will spur progress.

“This is truly the next giant leap!”