Expo 67 Totally Explained

Everything about Expo 67 totally explained

The 1967 International and Universal Exposition, or Expo 67 as it was commonly known, was the General Exhibition Category 1 World's Fair held in Montreal, Canada from April 27 to October 29, 1967. It was considered to be the most successful World's Fair of the 20th century, with over 50 million visitors and 62 nations participating. It also set the single-day attendance record for a world's fair with 569,000 visitors on its third day.
   Expo 67 was Canada's main celebration during its centennial year. The fair was originally intended to be held in Moscow, to help the Soviet Union celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution but, for various reasons, the Soviets decided to cancel, and Canada was awarded it in the fall of 1962.
   The project wasn't originally overwhelmingly supported in Canada. It took the determination of Montreal's mayor, and a new team of managers, to guide it past political, physical and temporal hurdles. Defying even a computer analysis that said it couldn't be done, the fair opened on time.
   After October 1967, Expo 67 lived on as an exhibition called Man and His World during the summer months, from 1968 until 1981. By that time, most of the buildings had fallen into disrepair and were dismantled. Today, the islands that hosted the world are mainly used as parkland and for recreational use, with only a few remaining structures from Expo 67 to show that the fair was held there. To this day, most Canadians from that time still regard it as one of the country's finest cultural achievements.

History

Background

The idea of hosting the 1967 World's Fair dates back to 1956. But it was in 1958 when Conservative Senator Mark Drouin pushed for the exhibition that the idea of hosting a fair to celebrate Canada's centennial began to take shape. Initially it was offered to Toronto but politicians there rejected the idea. However, Montreal's mayor Sarto Fournier backed the proposal, allowing Canada to make a bid to the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). At the BIE's May 5, 1960 meeting in Paris, Moscow was awarded the fair after five rounds of voting that eliminated Austria's and then Canada's bids. In April 1962, the Soviets scrapped plans to host the fair due to financial constraints and concerns about travelers bringing western ideas and customs to the Soviet public. Montreal's new mayor, Jean Drapeau, lobbied the Canadian government to try again for the fair, which they did. On November 13, 1962 the BIE changed the location of the World's Fair to Canada, and the Expo 67 went on to become was the third-best attended of all BIE-sanctioned world expositions, as of 2007 (after Osaka and Paris).
Several sites were proposed as the main Expo grounds. One location that was considered was Mount Royal Park, to the north of the downtown core . But it was Drapeau's idea to create new islands in the St. Lawrence river, along with enlarging Île Sainte-Hélène. The choice also prevented land speculation, and overcame opposition from Montreal's surrounding municipalities.

Key people

Expo didn't get off to a smooth start when, in 1963, many top organizing committee officials resigned. One of the reasons for the resignations was that a computer program predicted that the event couldn't possibly be constructed in time. Another, more likely, reason for the mass resignations was the fact that on April 22, 1963, the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Lester Pearson was sworn in. This meant that former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's Conservative government appointees on the Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition board of directors were likely forced to resign. Pierre Dupuy, a diplomat, was named Commissioner General, after Diefenbaker appointee Paul Bienvenue resigned from the post in 1963. One of the main responsibilities of the Commissioner General was to attract other nations to build pavilions at Expo.. Dupuy's 'right-hand' man was Robert Fletcher Shaw, the deputy commissioner general and vice-president of the fair's corporation. As historian Pierre Berton put it, the cooperation between Canada's French and English speaking communities "was the secret of Expo's success–'the Québécois flair, the English-Canadian pragmatism.'" However, Berton also points out that this is an over-simplification of national stereotypes. Arguably Expo did, for a short period anyway, bridge the 'Two Solitudes.'

Montebello conference produces theme

In May 1963, a group of prominent Canadian thinkers including Alan Jarvis, director of the National Gallery of Canada, novelists Hugh MacLennan and Gabrielle Roy, J. Tuzo Wilson, geophysicist, and Claude Robillard, town planner, met for three days at the Seigneury Club in Montebello, Quebec. The theme, Man and His World, was based on the 1939 book entitled Terre des Hommes (translated as Wind, Sand and Stars) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In Roy's introduction to the Expo 67 corporation's book, entitled Terre des Hommes/Man and His World, she elucidates the theme:

In Terre des Hommes, his haunting book, so filled with dreams and hopes for the future, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes of how deeply moved he was when, flying for the first time by night alone over Argentina, he happened to notice a few flickering lights scattered below him across an almost empty plain. They "twinkled here and there, alone like stars." ...In truth, being made aware of our own solitude can give us insight into the solitude of others. It can even cause us to gravitate towards one another as if to lessen our distress. Without this inevitable solitude, would there be any fusion at all, any tenderness between human beings.
Moved as he was by a heightened awareness of the solitude of all creation and by the human need for solidarity, Saint-Exupéry found a phrase to express his anguish and his hope that was as simple as it was rich in meaning; and because that phrase was chosen many years later to be the governing idea of Expo 67, a group of people from all walks of life was invited by the Corporation to reflect upon it and to see how it could be given tangible form.

The organizers also created seventeen theme elements for Man and his World:

Man the Creator: The Gallery of Fine Arts; Contemporary Sculpture; Industrial Design; Photography.
Man the Producer: Resources for Man; Man in Control; Progress.
Man the Explorer: Man, his Planet and Space; Man and Life; Man and the Oceans; Man and the Polar Regions
Man the Provider
Man and his Health
Man in the Community
Labyrinth
Habitat 67
Du Pont Auditorium of Canada: The philosophy and scientific content of theme exhibits were presented and emphasized in this 372 seat hall.
Construction begins
Construction started on August 13 1963, when Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson pulled a lever that signalled a front-end loader to dump the first batch of fill to enlarge Île Sainte-Hélène. The 25 million tons of fill needed to construct the islands was coming from the Montreal metro's excavations, a public works project that was already under construction before Expo was awarded to Montreal. Expo's initial period of construction mainly centred on enlarging Île Ste-Hélène and creating the artificial island of Île Notre-Dame. While construction continued, the land rising out of Montreal harbour wasn't owned by the Expo Corporation yet. After the final mounds of earth completed the islands, the grounds that would hold the fair were officially transferred from the City of Montreal to the corporation on June 20, 1964. On April 28, 1967, opening day, everything was ready, with one exception: Habitat 67, which was then displayed as a work in progress.
   Building and enlarging the islands, along with the new Concorde Bridge built to connect them with the site-specific mass transit system known as the Montreal Expo Express, plus a boat pier, cost more than the Saint Lawrence Seaway project did only five years earlier: this was even before any buildings or infrastructure were constructed.
Logo
The logo was designed by Montreal artist Julien Hébert. The basic unit of the logo is an ancient symbol of man. Two of the symbols (pictograms of 'man') are linked as to represent friendship. The icon was repeated in a circular arrangement to represent 'friendship around the world'. The logotype is lower-case bold-face, Optima font. It didn't enjoy unanimous support from federal politicians, as some of them tried to kill it with a motion in the Canadian House of Commons.
Theme songs
The official Expo 67 theme song was composed by Stephane Venne and was titled: "Hey Friend, Say Friend / Un Jour, Un Jour". Complaints were made about the suitability of the song as lyrics mention neither Montreal nor Expo 67. The song was selected from an international competition. Over 2,200 entries from 35 countries were made.
   But the song that most Canadians associate with Expo was written by Bobby Gimby, a veteran commercial jingle writer who composed the popular Centennial tune "Ca-na-da", which went on to sell over 500,000 copies. Gimby earned the name the "Pied Piper of Canada". The music for "Ca-na-da" was arranged by Ben McPeek, who also created the music played in the Canadian Pulp and Paper Industry pavilion. In 1971, Gimby granted all future royalties to the Boy Scouts of Canada.
   The theme song Something to Sing About, used for the Canadian pavilion, was initially written for a 1963 television special.
   The Ontario pavilion also had its own theme song: "A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow", which has evolved to become the unofficial theme song for the province.
Expo opens
Official opening ceremonies were held on Thursday afternoon, April 27, 1967. The ceremonies were an invitation-only event, held at Place des Nations. Governor General of Canada Roland Michener proclaimed the fair open after the Expo flame was ignited by Prime Minister Pearson. On hand were over 7,000 media and invited guests including 53 heads of state. Over 1000 reporters covered the event, broadcast in NTSC Colour, live via satellite, to a worldwide audience of over 700,000,000 viewers and listeners.
   Expo 67 officially opened to the public on the morning of Friday, April 28, 1967, with a space age style countdown. A capacity crowd at Place d'Accueil participated in the atomic clock-controlled countdown that ended when the fair opened precisely at 9:30 a.m. An estimated crowd of between 310,000 and 335,000 visitors showed up for opening day, as opposed to the expected crowd of 200,000. The first person through the Expo gates at Place d'Accueil was Al Carter, a 41-year-old jazz drummer from Chicago, who was recognized for his accomplishment by Expo 67's director of operations Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien. Beaubien presented Carter with a gold watch for his feat.
   On opening day, there was considerable comment on the uniform of the hostesses from the UK Pavilion. The dresses had been designed to the then new minidress style, introduced in the previous year by Mary Quant. By the middle of the summer, nearly every other pavilion had raised the hem of the uniforms of their hostesses. Canadian women were quick to take to the liberated style of the miniskirt.
Entertainment, Ed Sullivan Show, and VIPs
A notable feature of Expo 67 was the World Festival of Art and Entertainment, featuring art galleries, opera, ballet and theatre companies, alongside orchestras, jazz groups, famous Canadian pop musicians and other cultural attractions. Many pavilions had music and performance stages, where visitors could find free concerts and shows. Most of the featured entertainment took place in the following venues: La Place des Arts; Expo Theatre; Place des Nations; La Ronde and Automotive Stadium.
   The fair was visited by many of the most notable people of the day including Queen Elizabeth II, Lyndon Johnson, Princess Grace, Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Ethiopia's leader Haile Selassie, Charles de Gaulle, Bing Crosby, Harry Belafonte, Maurice Chevalier and Marlene Dietrich. Musicians like Thelonious Monk and Jefferson Airplane entertained the crowds.
Problems
Despite its successes, there were problems: FLQ terrorists had initially threatened to disrupt the fair, but were inactive during this period. Vietnam war protesters picketed during the opening day, April 28. American President Lyndon B. Johnson's visit became a focus of war protesters. The Cuba pavilion attracted threats that it would be destroyed by anti-Castro forces that never materialized. In June, the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East flared up again in the Six Day War, which resulted in Kuwait pulling out of the fair in protest to the way Western nations dealt with the war.
   Starting at 2:00 p.m., Expo Commissioner General Pierre Dupuy officiated over the medal ceremony, in which participating nations and organizations received gold and silver medallions, as well as the ceremony in which national flags were lowered in the reverse order to which they'd been raised, with Canada's flag lowered first and Nigeria's lowered last. Rounding out the top five pavilions, in terms of attendance were: Canada 11 million visitors, the United States 9 million, France 8.5 million, and Czechoslovakia 8 million. In the year 2000, the park was renamed from Parc des Îles to Parc Jean-Drapeau, after the mayor that brought the fair to Montreal. In 2006, the corporation that runs the park also changed its name from the Société du parc des Îles to the Société du parc Jean-Drapeau. Two prominent buildings remaining in use on the Expo grounds are the Buckminster Fuller dome (now operating as an environmental sciences museum called Biosphère) and the Habitat 67 residences. Also, the French and Quebec pavilions now form the Montreal Casino. La Toundra Hallis part of the surviving structural remains of the Canadian pavilion. It is now a restaurant and special events hall. Another part of the pavilion now serves as the administration building of Parc Jean-Drapeau.Katimavik's distinctive inverted pyramid and much of the rest of the Canadian pavilion were dismantled during the 1970s. The Jamaican pavilion is still standing, and Place des Nations, where the opening and closing ceremonies were held, also survives. A part of the Korean pavilion remains as a shelter for the bus route that connects with the metro station. Additionally, the former Tunisian Pavilion exists as a City of Montreal/Parc Jean Drapeau administration and logistics center. It is within the vicinity of the Cosmos Bridge, which connects Ile-St-Helene to Ile-Notre-Dame. The bridge linked the two islands and at either end were the American and Soviet Pavilions respectively. Other remaining structures include sculptures, lampposts and landscaping. The rapid transit subway system still has at least one "Man and His World" logo on a station's wall. La Ronde survives and is expanding. In 2001 it was sold to the New York amusement park company Six Flags. In 2007, a new group, Expo 17, is looking to bring a smaller-scale – BIE sanctioned – exposition to Montreal for the 50th anniversary of Expo 67 and Canada's Sesquicentennial(2017). Expo 17 hopes a new World's Fair will regenerate the spirit of Canada's landmark centennial project.
References and notes

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Everything about Expo 67 totally explained

History

Background

Key people

Montebello conference produces theme

Construction begins

Logo

Theme songs

Expo opens

Entertainment, Ed Sullivan Show, and VIPs

Problems

References and notes