When the impossible dream came true at Expo 67
The late and legendary Pierre Berton, a one-time Star man who saw rather a lot in his glittering career, judged Expo 67 in Montreal “a miracle.”
And if Canada’s most popular of history chroniclers saw the hand of providence at work, who’s to argue?
“We see it now as one of the shining moments of our history, up there with the building of the Pacific railway or the victory at Vimy Ridge,” Berton wrote 30 years after Expo in his book 1967: The Last Good Year.
He was hardly the only writer of the day caught up in the rapture.
“Its very existence is a symbol of the vigor and enthusiasm of the Canadians who conceived an impossible idea and made it come true,” gushed Time magazine.
Half a century on, as Canada celebrates the 150th anniversary of Confederation, Expo remains epic in the national mythology, the coming of age of a country and a generation.
It has been called our Woodstock, our “Summer of Love,” “Canada’s Camelot.” For ’60s teens, it was our very own On the Road, a pilgrimage of patriotism, millions of personal declarations of independence.
Who knew then, of course, that beneath the apparent fraternité of the two solitudes a crisis in Quebec was brewing?
The ’60s were a decade kicked off by U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural invitation to “begin anew,” to make civility and sincerity our relationship touchstones at home and abroad.
“Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce,” he said, after taking the oath of office.
By contemporary standards, that speech stands as both richly poetic and naively utopian. At the time, it stirred imaginations.
Then, everything seemed possible. Youth was in the ascendance. The Feminine Mystique had launched a revolution.
Still, if possibility and idealism were in the air, they were underwritten by urgency and necessity, by a sense — with Vietnam, The Silent Spring, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War — that the centre would not, could not hold.
It seemed no mere coincidence that the Expo of 1967 had gone from what was initially planned as the 50-year anniversary celebration of the Russian Revolution to marking the centennial of Canada’s Confederation.
The Soviet Union, in 1955, had first been awarded the chance to host the 1967 world exposition, but in 1962 bowed out. In November that year, Expo was awarded to Canada.
While Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau is often credited with delivering Expo, the idea was conceived, by most accounts, by Sen. Mark Drouin during a visit to the World’s Fair in Brussels in 1958, when he thought it would be a splendid way to celebrate the centennial.
Drapeau was reportedly cool at first to the idea. But when he bought in, he did so with gusto.
There was a three-day “thinkers” conference in April 1963, in Montebello, Que. From that, thanks in part to novelist Gabrielle Roy, came the theme of “Man and his World,” or Terre des Hommes, the notion borrowed from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1939 book of that title.
If it would likely have to be de-gendered for modern times, it was a brave and imaginative stroke. Not for this event a cavalcade of the latest gadgets. Instead, it was to celebrate values and aspirations.
To be sure, it took aspiration of a grand scale to contemplate holding the celebration on man-made islands in Montreal. Even the new prime minister, Lester Pearson, thought that notion preposterous.
“With four million square miles of land we should be able to find a plot some place,” he told Drapeau.
On a visit to the site in August 1963, Pearson’s doubts remained.
“I would be less than frank if I did not add that I feel we all have cause for concern over the magnitude of the tasks that must be accomplished.”
But accomplished those tasks were, and rise those islands did.
To them would come cavalcades of families, school groups, cool kids, holiday makers, presidents, royalty, international rogues.
Charles de Gaulle, the Shah of Iran, Haile Selassie, U Thant, Lyndon Johnson, Grace Kelly.
Why, Ed Sullivan even broadcast a show from Expo!
In all, more than 50 million visitors — more than double the population of the country — showed up to take in the artist’s paradise, a wonderland of avant- garde architecture, this Canadian melding of London’s Carnaby St. and Disneyland and The Jetsons and all the world’s fairs that had ever been.
Not, of course, that it was without that Canadian penchant for large snits over small matters.
The now-famous Expo symbol, designed by Montreal artist Julien Hébert, provoked much debate. Its theme of unity and common goals made a circle of stick-figure men with outstretched arms, and resonated of the peace symbol so prevalent in the day.
Those eager to have it replaced included former prime minister John Diefenbaker, who denounced it as, among other things, “an arctic monstrosity.”
But it worked. Splendidly. As did so much of that audacious Canadian undertaking.
For half a century, as nostalgia has burnished the moment, Canadians who made the trip recalled its impact.
When Lester Pearson closed that magical gathering in Montreal, he said: “Expo’s lasting impact is: That the genius and fate of man know no boundaries but are universal; that the future peace and well-being of the world community of men depend on achieving the kind of unity of purpose within the great diversity of national effort that has been achieved here at this greatest of all Canada’s Centennial achievements.” Right he probably was. Right, 50 years on, he surely remains.