The Seventh Shock Tube Symposium was held 23–25 June 1969 in Toronto, Canada. Sponsored by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies and the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the meeting drew nearly 300 attendees from some 20 countries. Of the 40 invited and contributed papers, several described new shock-tube techniques while the majority presented recent experimental results and related theory in the fields of shock structure, atomic and molecular physics, radiation, plasma flows, shock waves in solids, and boundary layers. This report summarizes the principal advances presented and attempts a projection of future directions in shock-tube research. The full proceedings will be published by the University of Toronto Press; the programme was published in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society, June 1969, p. 754.