The Best Place to Be: Expo 67 and Its Time

by John Lownsbrough

  For six months in 1967, from late April until the end of October, Canada and its world’s fair, Expo 67, became the focus of national and international attention in a way the country and its people had rarely experienced. Expo 67 crystallized the buoyant mood and newfound sense of confidence many felt during Canada’s centennial. It becomes clearer, though, as its forty-fifth anniversary approaches in spring 2012, that Expo was something more than just a great world’s fair. For many Canadians, it became a touchstone, a popular event that penetrated the collective psyche. The Best Place to Be takes a look at Expo and at the social and political contexts in which it occurred. It is above all a story of the young men and women who worked at Expo, the visitors, and the cameo appearances from the titled and celebrated, such as Elizabeth II, President Lyndon Johnson, President Charles de Gaulle (whose visit to Expo and Montreal became infamous), U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Princess Grace of Monaco, Princess Margaret, Marshall McLuhan, Sidney Poitier, Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, Twiggy, and Pierre Trudeau.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2012

Reviews

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another exercise in turning vast, epic history into a concise, readable piece of work...with an added layer of baby boomer melancholy. One day, I'm sure there will be the ultimate, definitive account of Expo 67...but until that day, this is the best one-stop-shop for information & nostalgia you will find on the book shelves.

[Heep · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fell in love with Montreal while visiting Expo '67 as a little child. It seemed like a world of wonder. And Montreal - it was filled with an amazing underground city, a metro and these fantastic roadways. It was something like the Jetsons meets metropolitan Europe. To my young eyes, it looked astonishing and new.
Then there was the Expo site with its Habitat, la Ronde and the fabulous pavilions of Man and his World - I was captivated. It was stunning when my parents told me later that year that the fair had closed - why would anything so wonderful and fun ever have to end?
This book tells the story of one of the great world's fairs from conception to completion to its legacy. By comparison to other memorable expositions, Chicago's White City and the New York World's Fair of 1939-40, Montreal perhaps did not truly expose the world of the future - it was highly aspirational, perhaps the acme of the humanist movement. Its vision in architecture and urban design have not been realized although some of the themes seem to be coming back into vogue. New York by comparison laid out the imminent post-war, North American suburban landscape in some detail, and even made it seem like the best thing that could ever happen. For me, I would have preferred the urbanity of Sadfie's Habitat, the architecture of Expo '67 and its vision of walkable spaces connected by public transit.
This book brings back many happy memories along with a sense of Canada that would find human form in Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Prime Minister who would sweep into power in 1968. It seems more clear to me now that Montreal's Expo helped to inspire Canada's concept of multi-culturism.
Expo also took place in Quebec during a time of remarkable change and political experimentation. The quiet revolution had taken place a couple of years before the fair's inception, and had ushered out a legacy of provincial rule closely tied to the Catholic Church, and largely subject to economic control by an Anglophone elite. A muscular, statist Francophone separatist movement was starting to develop, and Lownsbrough documents the intersection of notable political figures with the Expo movement - Rene Levesque, Jean Drapeau and, of course, Charles de Gaulle.
One of the most fascinating episodes in Expo '67 involves de Gaulle's visit to Quebec, where he agitated for a united Francophone alliance based in France, but uniting the (white) French nations. De Gaulle was noted for his arrogance and lack of diplomatic sensitivity, and acted in a way that is truly unthinkable. The high-water mark came in a speech where he famously uttered the phrase "vive le Quebec libre" which essentially extolls an independent Quebec. It would be astonishing for the leader of an ally to utter such phrase anywhere, but to do so while on a visit is a stunning breach of etiquette. The Canadian prime minister reacted with understandable fury and de Gaulle decided to end the state visit without going to Canada's capital or meeting the Prime Minister. The truly heartening part of the story is that de Gaulle got a very thoughtful and public dressing down by Montreal's mayor, Jean Drapeau, before heading back to France.
Drapeau was complicated, and I will remember him as the perpetual mayor of Montreal during my youth. He brought Montreal the Expo, the metro, the 1976 Olympics and a lot of debt. In my mind, he would not have a better moment than the night he explained that France had left Quebecers to fend for themselves when the colony was lost to Britain on the Plains of Abraham, and in effect, as a proud and resilient people, Quebec did not need France to meddle now. De Gaulle got the point. Bravo.

[Richard Archambault · Rating 4 out of 5]

An uneven book, with some chapters much more interesting than others. This is a 4-star for history buffs or folks interested in my beautiful city, but more likely a 3-star for folks without that burning interest. What irked me the most was the constant and sudden name-dropping of people who had barely any relation to the topic being discussed; these bits often felt like filler. Second to that was the way the author occasionally repeated the same anecdote 2 or more times in different ways, in different parts of the book. That also felt a bit like filler; this wasn't a book that one could easily just pick up and start reading a random chapter and so you'd want to make sure readers caught this anecdote, so including them multiple times was unnecessary.

[Blaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was thirteen years old in 1967. It was Canada's centennial and was fully caught up in all of the excitement. This book brought back some memories. I loved some of the anecdotes and background history provided by the writer. For Canadian history buffs, it is a fun read but some chapters are more interesting than others. It is a bit uneven when it comes to holding a person's interest.

[Sue Mosher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave me a new perspective on the events of that "big" year that I remember from when I was 5. 5 year olds remember things quite differently from adults. :-)

[Michael Primiani · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome and comprehensive history of this event, littered with really cool facts. Well researched and well written.

[Margaret Joyce]

As a seasoned Montrealer who was enthralled by the magic of Expo '67, I would have liked this book to reflect some of that magic. Instead, it was more documentary in tone, and as such, a tad boring. Too bad. Maybe someone will yet speak to the magic of the exhibition, the city, and that time of life. Maybe that could be done by a vision of hope -- Expo as metaphor for everything we know will one day surface again, in this age of worried, gray-garbed walkers where previously we Montrealers put more spring into our stepping along.

[Paul G G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful evocation of the heady atmosphere of the centennial celebrations in Montreal.