1989's Back Again, In The SkyDome Opening That Featured Thousands Of Canadians Capering About, Plus Alan Thicke

Toronto's Rogers Centre was introduced in June 1989 as the SkyDome, at a time when the name "SkyDome" suggested an exciting future full of retractable roofs and mud-free Argonauts games, which we'd have to agree are two of the greatest developments of the past twenty-plus years.

This is the introduction to the SkyDome's televised grand opening — hosted, of course, by Alan Thicke and Andrea Martin, and also featuring appearances by a lot of Canadian singers you've never heard of before, the band Glass Tiger, and an unknown number of capering Canadian fairies.

The epic, which must have been cut short for YouTube's purposes, opens with a multi-act singing sequence with the indelible opening line, "Welcome to SkyDome, the world's largest retractable-ceiling, multi-purpose, eight-hundred-thirty-story-hiiiiiiigh dome!" We are then featured to a series of acts, which all share the same subtext: How great is it that this roof can sometimes not be a roof?!

"Though we get clobbered we'll never get wet!" sing the stand-in Blue Jays. "No tackling in the rain... there's no mud on our face!" sing the stand-in Argonauts. "Now we're weather-proof!" sing the fairies. Then there's the inevitable Broadway show interlude, and we are reminded for a final time that yes, the roof can move, and the entire crowd spells out S-K-Y-D-O-M-E. In some later year — definitely not this one — irony is born.

Video via, H/T Guardian Sport.

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