TransitBart
Senior Member
Since there is a general discussion on the 90’s, I thought I’d contribute this.
This is the Toronto Band ‘Parachute Club’
The video was shot in the Portuguese neighbourhoods around Augusta and Queen and on Wellington St. south of the (then) new Roy Thompson Hall. You won’t see this much open sky around Roy Thompson Hall again.
Since this is Urban Toronto...
It’s very Canadian. The song contains references to peace. The backdrop was the deployment of American Pershing II missiles with nuclear warheads in West Germany by President Ronald Reagan. This was very controversial in then West Germany. Helmut Kohl had just become the German Federal Chancellor. The deployment of the missiles was a line drawn in the sand by the west against a then adventuresome and emboldened Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev. The new dynamic leadership in the west was President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher and Chancellor Kohl, and soon Canada’s Prime Minister Mulroney. Each of them came to government with a mandate to deal with failed economics from the 1970s which lead to inflation and staggeringly high interest rates to start the decade.
The standoff in Germany between the west and the Soviet Union lead to cultural developments such as Nena’s Luftballons, and political breakthroughs later in the decade like the Green Party in Germany.
Pierre Trudeau was still Prime Minister and we were still comfortably squishy Canadians after twenty years of Liberal government in Ottawa. That would change beginning in 1984 with the election of the Mulroney government and - heavens - radical new policies like privatizing Canadian National and Air Canada, and Transport Canada putting airports in the hands of local airport authorities.
Meanwhile, the lead singer of Parachute Club was Lorraine Segato - an out lesbian. What a radical time this was.
This is the Toronto Band ‘Parachute Club’
The video was shot in the Portuguese neighbourhoods around Augusta and Queen and on Wellington St. south of the (then) new Roy Thompson Hall. You won’t see this much open sky around Roy Thompson Hall again.
Since this is Urban Toronto...
It’s very Canadian. The song contains references to peace. The backdrop was the deployment of American Pershing II missiles with nuclear warheads in West Germany by President Ronald Reagan. This was very controversial in then West Germany. Helmut Kohl had just become the German Federal Chancellor. The deployment of the missiles was a line drawn in the sand by the west against a then adventuresome and emboldened Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev. The new dynamic leadership in the west was President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher and Chancellor Kohl, and soon Canada’s Prime Minister Mulroney. Each of them came to government with a mandate to deal with failed economics from the 1970s which lead to inflation and staggeringly high interest rates to start the decade.
The standoff in Germany between the west and the Soviet Union lead to cultural developments such as Nena’s Luftballons, and political breakthroughs later in the decade like the Green Party in Germany.
Pierre Trudeau was still Prime Minister and we were still comfortably squishy Canadians after twenty years of Liberal government in Ottawa. That would change beginning in 1984 with the election of the Mulroney government and - heavens - radical new policies like privatizing Canadian National and Air Canada, and Transport Canada putting airports in the hands of local airport authorities.
Meanwhile, the lead singer of Parachute Club was Lorraine Segato - an out lesbian. What a radical time this was.
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