Ride a monorail, see non-linear cinema, or relax at the Asbestos Plaza

April 28, 2017 8:07 AM

Fifty years ago today, Expo 67 opened in Montreal. The Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Star look back.

Widely acknowledged as the most successful World's Fair ever, Expo 67 is mostly remembered for its iconic design and architecture (and cuisine, muses the Globe and Mail). It helped shaped modern Montreal, leaving behind Île Notre-Dame (built from millions of tons of rock excavated for the Montreal Metro), Parc Jean-Drapeau, Buckminster Fuller's Biosphère, Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67, the Montreal Casino, Place des Nations, and numerous public artworks. It paved the way for Montreal to host the 1976 Summer Olympics (and lent its name to the much-missed Montreal Expos).

(Expo 67 previously, on, MetaFilter)

posted by oulipian (12 comments total)

1976 was also when the Biosphère burned in a spectacular fire.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:22 AM on April 28, 2017

I loved the '67 fair! The '64 NYC fair was OK, but a little commercial. The Montreal '67 Expo was truly international. Great people-watching. Lots of cinematic experimentation. Long lines. My favorite was the Czechoslovakian pavilion, which featured two movie screens on the sides, and a background screen, with live actors...ahh, too hard to describe. I searched for it on the internet, and learned that the pavilion featured the first "interactive movie." Not what I remembered at all. Well, I was 15. Maybe I was thinking of the Hungarian pavilion. Who knows. It was a blast. And the fabulous Habitat is still inhabited.
posted by kozad at 8:39 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Ontariariario.

Part 1 and Part 2.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:50 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

(and lent its name to the much-missed Montreal Expos).

*jauntily adjusts Nationals cap*
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:27 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

some people would say the only thing that's different is what's underneath your hat
posted by mintcake! at 9:37 AM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

We went to the Expo when I was five and it was awesome. The two things I remember the best were the Biosphere and some kind of cable car ride that went into a volcano where a (mechanical) pterodactyl popped out at you and screeched when the car made a turn. I haven't found anything online about the latter yet.
posted by lagomorphius at 10:19 AM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ha the 60s... when in 5 years we could plan & build Expo 67, start building the metro, and even build the island on which the expo took place with the rock from the metro excavation.

Now it takes us 13 years to do a single BRT line....
posted by coust at 10:33 AM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

The National Film Board has some videos from and about the event.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:11 PM on April 28, 2017

and some kind of cable car ride that went into a volcano where a (mechanical) pterodactyl popped out at you and screeched when the car made a turn. I haven't found anything online about the latter yet.

Ta-daaa! It was The Gyrotron.

Lots more where that came from.
posted by lagomorphius at 12:47 PM on April 28, 2017

Expo 67 took place before I was born, but I have always loved the feeling of hope for the future of Montreal as the definitive centre of Canada. A feeling that was crushed in the following years by separatism and runaway corruption.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:28 PM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

This was where I saw my first IBM computer. There was a black man with a light pen drawing Cartesian diagrams on a 2250. I was just a teen, but 6 years later I was repairing mainframes for IBM.
I believe there is a correlation.
posted by MtDewd at 4:59 AM on April 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

Having done a little obsessive research, I've concluded that what we actually saw was the Man and His World exhibition in 1968, which is what Expo 67 turned into after it was over. But everything from the Expo was still more or less intact.

The other expo we went to multiple times, because we always went to Canada in the summer for a teachers conference in Waterloo, was the big Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. What I remember best from the CNE, other than the giant slide, was the Soviet Pavilion, where they sold tons of science books (in English) for next to nothing.
posted by lagomorphius at 1:04 PM on April 29, 2017