1975 A year in History

Three quarters of the 20th century had passed and the time had come for us to leave the relative safety of what had been a sheltering haven for 5 years.. In 1975, our last year at Riverdale High School, we looked ahead to a world with few absolutes. In those days, we worried about the dangers of Acid Rain, a far cry from the spectre of the Global Warming looming over and sending us undeniable signals today. We worried about Venerial Diseases that seem almost minor when compared to today's devastating ravages of AIDS. And some of us were deeply concerned that the pool of NHL talent was being diluted over 18 teams, and today the League is expanded to 30! Other events in that special year were to have a substantial effect on the way our world works today and in the way we see ourselves in the future...

	1975 One year in History
	Three quarters of the 20th century had passed and the time had come for us to leave the relative safety of what had been a sheltering haven for 5 years.. In 1975, our last year at Riverdale High School, we looked ahead to a world with few absolutes. In those days, we worried about the dangers of Acid Rain, a far cry from the spectre of the Global Warming looming over and sending us undeniable signals today. We worried about Venerial Diseases that seem almost minor when compared to today's devastating ravages of AIDS. And some of us were deeply concerned that the pool of NHL talent was being diluted over 18 teams, and today the League is expanded to 30! Other events in that special year were to have a substantial effect on the way our world works today and in the way we see ourselves in the future...
	On April 30th, amid the chaos of oncoming North Vietnamese tanks and outgoing U.S. helicopters, South Vietnam's capital Saigon fell. A new official name was decreed - Ho Chi Minh City. The new name never caught on. To many, this day was the end of a protracted nightmare; for many returning GIs and Vietnamese civilians the real nightmare was just beginning. This year saw Skywalker Jay Cochrane, the "Prince of the Air", walk a wire hung between two towers at Bloor and Yonge Sts. in Toronto. In 1995 Cochrane completed a 1/2 mile marathon 410 metres above the Yangtze River in China. This took him 53 minutes to complete. On March 3, a high speed inter-city train known as the LRC (light, rapid, comfortable) and developed jointly by 3 Canadian companies, is tested by the C.N.R on it's Sarnia-Toronto run, ushering in a new era of Canadian-made high speed transport now known and used world wide. In the early evening of November 10, during one of the worst storms to hit Lake Superior in 30 years, the 729-foot Edmund Fitzgerald vanished without one signal for help. Battered by 30 -foot seas and 90-mile-an-hour winds, the ship abrupty dived to the bottom with her crew of 29. Even after 27 years and several diving investigations, the cause remains a mystery. On March 24, the intrepid and hardworking beaver, the animal on which the original economy of Canada was based but seen by some as vermin, officially becomes one of our most important symbols. On April 1, the "metrification" of Canada begins with the use of the Celsius Temperature scale. Over the next 10 years, changes from imperial to metric measurements continue. Everyone all comfortable with that now? On April 2, the worlds tallest free-standing structure, the CN Tower, is topped off, reaching a height of 553.33 metres. (Thats 1,815,550 inches imperial.... ) On November 8, an ironworker named William Eustace walks out on a projecting boom near the summit and jumps off. His parachute opens perfectly and his sucessful jump lands him a place in the history books and on this web page. On April 14, Premier William Davis of Ontario announces the establishment of a royal commission headed by Judy LaMarsh to study the effects of violence in the media. The study concluded that the show "Charlies Angels" really only had enough content for a 2 hour movie and that the shillouettes of the girls in the logo should not be sporting guns. No one takes this seriously for about 26 years. In this year, NASA contracts with Spar Aerospace of Toronto to buy at least five robotic arms, officially called the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System and known later as the Canadarm. The first space arm was officially signed over to NASA in February 1981, at the Spar plant in Toronto where it had been built. Trucked gingerly to Kennedy Space Center by the same driver who had taken the King Tutankhamon exhibit across North America the previous year, Canadarm was integrated into the first Space Shuttle "Columbia" in June 1981. The Canadarm has been installed in all Shuttles built since then. On April 19, 2001, its larger sibling, the Canadarm2 was delivered to and installed on the International Space Station (ISS) by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his crewmates aboard the shuttle Endeavour. On February 19, economist Sylvia Ostry becomes the first woman chief executive of a federal department, appointed Deputy Minister of consumer and corporate affairs. This year also saw Feminist Germaine Greer explain that feminism need not be the death of a "phallic relationship"... The Guess Who breaks up in this year and Burton Cummings goes solo. Randy Bachman scores the the best-selling 1975 album with his newly formed Bachman-Turner Overdrive. "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" tops the charts. A lot of great music was produced in 1975 including; Philadelphia Freedom (Elton John), Fame (David Bowie), One Of These Nights (Eagles), Love Will Keep Us Together (Captain & Tennille), Cat's In The Cradle (Harry Chapin), At Seventeen (Janis Ian), Sister Golden Hair (America), Black Water (Doobie Brothers) and Ballroom Blitz (The Sweet), to name but a few... And finally, this is the year that Apple launches the stand-alone personal computer era with the first user-friendly computer on the market. Without that quiet but hugely significant event, its unlikely that you would be reading this page at all....

1975 One year in History