Leaping off the CN Tower and sailing under a billowing parachute through the open dome to land on the field in the Rogers Centre has been the dream of Canadian BASE jumpers for decades.

But until Tuesday morning, no one has even been allowed to jump off Toronto’s iconic landmark with a parachute since stuntman Dar Robinson did it for a movie shoot in 1979.

So, understandably, people who saw the open parachute coming down over the city, landing just south of the tower, were surprised.

“My morning commute delayed by a commercial,” Sheliza Jamal tweeted, with pictures of the white parachute just after 8 a.m.

“Did anyone … just see the dude in the parachute near the CN Tower?? What the what?!” tweeted Laura Skelton from the GO train she was on.

The spectacle was part of the preparations for Toronto’s Pan Am Games this July.

“It was to shoot a promotional video for the Games,” said Pan Am Games spokesperson Teddy Katz.

Officials were tight lipped about all other details.

“I can’t speak about it,” Katz said.

BASE jumping, which is the act of jumping off fixed objects such as buildings, bridges, antennas and cliffs is a rare sight in North American cities.

It’s a sport that comes with considerable dangers — with just seconds between the jump and the ground, there’s no backup parachute or margin for error — and most property owners don’t give permission for jumpers. That routinely leads to BASE jumpers trying to sneak their way onto roof tops and, if they succeed, trying to evade police afterwards.

That makes a sanctioned jump off the CN Tower, the object that defines Toronto’s skyline, particularly ground breaking.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Robinson, who jumped off the tower as Christopher Plummer’s stunt double for a heist-gone-awry movie, has been the only sanctioned jumper for nearly four decades, but he wasn’t actually the first to do it.

That honour went to steelworker William Eustance, who leapt with his parachute off the tower in 1974 — as he was still building it.