Going to the HR MacMillan Planetarium was one of my favourite things to do, when me and friends had a few bucks saved up. The Planetarium (now known as the Space Centre) had a large theatre with a special projector that could cast images of starfields up onto the interior of its vast domed ceiling. You could watch projections of starfields in 360 degrees. A few years earlier, in high school, we’d visited once to learn about the constellations of the night sky, abd the make-up of the solar system.

But the shows I went to with my buddies were much better than astronomy lessons: we went to the Pink Floyd laser light show. We’d pile into an old Volkswagen beetle, and boot it from East Van down to Vanier Park, near English Bay. Parking was free back then, and we’d share a joint in the car before going in.

Entering the auditorium in the evening, just a little bit baked was always fun. It was a huge circular seating area, with the giant domed ceiling – the “screen” – above you, and an empty circular area on the floor in centre of the hall. The fiirst feeling I remember was the cool fresh air surrounding you as you took your seats. I think there were something like 36 speakers on the walls, around the perimeter of the audience area. It was probably one of the best audio systems in the city.

The announcer would welcome you to “Laser Floyd” and a giant steel monster would emerge from below the centre of the stage, looking like a giant death ray cannon from a Flash Gordon movie. It was Harold, the planetarium’s giant robotic starfield projector, which had multiple positionable cameras to cast images all around us in 360 degrees. Harold also had lasers that could project moving images and shapes onto the photographic imagery. Back in 1982, this was pretty much the height of large-scale audio-visual entertainment.