The Space Needle and the Century 21 Exhibition (a.k.a. The Seattle World's Fair)

So the iconic Space Needle is celebrating its 50th year. Happy Birthday to a Seattle landmark!


There's a lot of Space Needle stories going around right now, as it should be when something is being celebrated. Pictures of the foundation being built, reminiscings by many Seattleites, feature writers search for new approaches to an old story (and doing well at that!), a fresh galaxy-gold topnotch to the old gal.

When I arrived in Seattle from Korea aboard the USNS Marine Lynx (it may have been the Marine Phoenix; we went over in '53 on one, came back on the other in '55), one of the 900 or so members of Canada's Royal Highland regiment, the Black Watch, I luckily managed to start my debarkation leave right there in Seattle where my folks then lived, while the rest of my regiment headed for Vancouver BC and points east. At that time Dad was rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Roy Street, and the view from their home on Bigelow Avenue on the south slope of Queen Anne hill was, as I remember it, of the bus yards below, and area that years later would be the site of Century 21.

Years later, in December, 1961, I again visited Seattle, this time coming from Ottawa to help pave the way for Canada's participation in the Fair, in particular laying the ground work for Canada Week and the military tattoo to be performed in the Memorial Stadium. Plans called for a large Army commitment, primarily the Black Watch Highland Regiment and the Canadian Guards Regiment, plus the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride, as well as the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force. It was an awesome task arranging accommodation, transportation, as well as a start at what would be the actual staging of the pageant.


The Space Needle was still being built, now a very tall skeleton reaching way into the skies. (It was finished in April). I had met the fair's president, Joe Gandy, earlier, and at his gentle persistence overcame my instinctive fear of heights and rode up to the top of the Needle in a construction cage, nothing at all like the sleek, smooth elevators ascending the Needle today! It was something else. Early in my Army career I'd jumped out of airplanes, with no real worries. This time? A little higher than a training jump tower, but no parachute? No extra $30 a month jump pay? What one does to foster Canada-USA relations. My rate of foot clamminess was at least equal to our rate of ascent.  I'm told the view was spectacular!

Canada Week came later that year in September, and I would have loved to have been a continuing part of this. However, a regimental colleague, good friend and fellow officer, Ian Fraser, became the producer as I went the other direction, to the Belgium Congo with the United Nations. Ian did a simply masterful job, and staked out an ongoing reputation as a fine producer of fine tattoos and pageants for years after. It was the largest endeavor ever undertaken by the Canadian Armed Forces. The Mounties performed their famous Musical Ride (a secret: the horses know all the moves, the riders - - recruits from the RCMP depot in Regina, Manitoba are somewhat superfluous.) The pipers piped from the constructed fort-like facade at the end of the stadium, and the massed Armed Forces military bands and pipes and drums marched. You can see a full description of the pageant and what led up to the making of it at the Washington State Online History link. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called Canada Week "one of the biggest and brightest of all of the Seattle World's Fair weeks." Joe Gandy, writing to the troops involved, acclaimed, "The Canadian Tattoo has become and will ever remain in history the greatest and most thrilling spectacle of the Seattle's World Fair." I would love to have been there.


So Happy Birthday, Space Needle, and thank you for all that you symbolized then, and now. It was fun riding up to your top, I think.