Expo67
Originally this episode aired April 30th 2017. Prior name of the Podcast was Tea with Puppets.
In Episode 22, we look back at Expo67 and the stamps issued by Canada Post to celebrate the event.
One thing is true, if you live in Montreal, it’s hard to avoid celebration this year. Montreal is celebrating it’s 375th anniversary, but also the 50th anniversary of Expo67, which opened 50 years ago on April 27th 1967. They’ve even devised a Passport scheme to celebrate very similar to what they used back all those years ago. Let’s also not forget that 50 years ago Canada was celebrating it’s centennial year, and the party was seemingly centered in Montreal. We are now celebrating the 150 birthday of Canada, this year, so it’s seems these anniversaries are all intertwined.
So how is this all brought back to Canadian stamps? This past week, Canada Post started their Canada150 celebrations, in earnest. They announced that over the coming 5 weeks, 10 stamps will be issued to celebrate events in Canadian history from the past 50 years. And if you know, already heard or, if you haven’t yet already guessed, the first stamp issued in this special series is a stamp of the amazing Habitat67, a building created by world famous architect Moshe Safdie for Expo67.
Therefore, it was for this reason, I decided to dedicate this episode to the stamps issued by Canada Post for Expo67 and have us delve a bit deeper into the history behind the stamp. So let’s start with a closer look at Expo67, an event that left it’s mark on the city, the province, the country and the world 50 years ago.
The story actually starts remarkably with the fact that Montreal was not supposed to have the Expo. Canada and Russia were in the pursuit of the event, an officially sanctioned World’s Fair from the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE).
When voting happened in May 1960, Moscow won after 5 votes. However in April 1962, the Soviets scrapped plans to host the fair because of financial constraints and security concerns.
Montreal’s mayor, Jean Drapeau, lobbied the Canadian government to try and secure the event. As we now know they were successful in this 2nd chance, but they needed to work quick.
In late 1962 the Federal Government established a crown company, the Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition. It’s main purpose was to build and run the exposition. The exhibition was to be a three-way partnership, with 50 per cent participation by the federal government, 37.5 per cent by the Québec government and 12.5 per cent by the city of Montréal.
With this is place they needed a theme. A conference of educators, literary figures and intellectuals met in Montebello, Québec, to choose a theme for the exposition. What emerged was the theme of “Man and His World”. It was derived from the title of a book by the French author, poet and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes.
By late 1963, the master plan for the Expo was completed, but the main issue now facing the exhibition is where could it be held in Montreal?
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. Eventually, Drapeau and his team, had the idea to create new islands in the St. Lawrence river, and to enlarge the existing Saint Helen’s Island. The choice overcame opposition from Montreal’s surrounding municipalities, and also prevented land speculation.
It took about 25 million tons of fill to construct the islands for Expo67. About 12% of the dirt came from excavations of the Montreal Metro system that was already under construction even before Expo67 was awarded. There was also the creation of Auto-Route Decarie which also had begun and had a deadline of April 1967.
The remainder of the fill came from quarries on Montreal and the South Shore. As soon as they realized they would not have enough fill, they added some small lakes and canals to the islands to reduce the amount of dirt required.
The Expo Corporation was not responsible for this work, so they awaited eagerly to get started on building all the exhibitions. Finally on June 20, 1964, the city of Montreal officially transferred the land to the Corporation so it could get started.
The Expo corporation would only have 1042 days to build everything and have it functioning for opening day. A computer program predicted that the event could not possibly be constructed in time, which have certainly added to the stress.
There were also lots of partners to consider and significant amount of money being spent.
With new techniques, hard work, a bit of luck and an amazing management group, on April 28, 1967, the opening day of the Expo, everything was ready. New auto-routes had been built, a metro system was unveiled, the Concorde bridge erected, and over 90 pavilions on site were built by Countries, Industries, and Corporations.
Official opening ceremonies were held on Thursday afternoon, April 27, 1967. The ceremonies were an invitation-only event, held at Place des Nations. There were over 7,000 guests from 62 countries in attendance. Canada’s Governor General, Roland Michener, proclaimed the exhibition open after the Expo flame was ignited by Prime Minister Pearson. It was a lovely ceremony, very reminiscent of an Olympic opening ceremony, minus the procession of nations and dance number.
I can only imagine how excited people were to get in and see this amazing event. It had also a unique way to handle tickets. They created an idea of the Expo passport, which for $35 offered an adult unlimited access to the fair for the entire season.
On the front was the Expo67 logo designed by Montreal artist Julien Hébert. The basic unit of the logo is an ancient symbol of man in the shape of a Y. 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”. It must have seemed like the whole world was coming too.
On the morning of Friday, April 28, 1967, with a space age-style countdown, a capacity crowd waited at Place d’Accueil, as an atomic clock countdown ended precisely at 9:30 a.m. EST, and the gates were opened. An estimated crowd of over 300,000 visitors showed up just for the opening day. The world was invited to come and it did.
As I was not born yet, so I can only imagine how amazing it was. Just a quick look at the stars who visited is very eye opening. Here is just a taste of the notable guests: Canada’s monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, US President Lyndon B. Johnson, Princess Grace of Monaco, Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie, France’s Charles de Gaulle, Bing Crosby, Harry Belafonte, Maurice Chevalier, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Actress Marlene Dietrich.
From a Philately point of view, there was also an amazing amount of stamps issued. Numerous countries created stamps to celebrate the occasion. You can see a whole bunch here. I’ve recently seen an amazing 19 panel exhibit done at Lakeshore 2017 by Elmer Cleary that magnificently brings most of these stamps together.
For our purposes, I will focus on the issue from Canada Post. On the opening day of Expo 67, Canada Post issued a 5¢ stamp designed by Harvey Thomas Prosser.
The stamp showcases the Canadian Pavilion, which was built at a cost of $21 Million CAD, and covered almost 12 acres.
It is dominated by an inverted pyramid named “Katimavik”, an Eskimo word meaning “a meeting place”. It certainly was an iconic piece to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Canada. It also followed the trend of the stamps issued by the other participating countries, which almost always contained the design of their respective countries pavilions at the Expo.
There was also a significant change on this occasion for First Day Covers by Canada Post. The First Day Covers were processed by the Canada Post from the actual Expo 67 site, instead of the customary Ottawa postmark. This must have been something extra special for those contemporary stamp collectors too. You can learn more details about the stamp here.
Anyway, as I mentioned, this was an amazing event, for the city, the province and the country. When the event would close on Sunday afternoon, October 29, 1967 over 50 million visitors had been to the various attractions at Expo 67, making it one of the most successful World’s Fairs of the 20th Century.
Being this was such a great event, Montreal, tried to keep the magic going. After 1967, Mayor Jean Drapeau announced the exposition would continue for several summer seasons as a collection of international pavilions known as “Man and His World”. Several countries participated in this new exhibition in 1968, which was also attended by 20 million people. Some pavilions were added or transformed, according to the new themes.
However, as time went on and attendance declined, the physical condition of the site deteriorated. It’s also important to note that many of the pavilions were designed to be torn down after six months, and were simply not built to withstand Montreal winters. So it’s not really surprising they did not hold up well.
By the end 1971 season, it became obvious the “Man and His World” exhibition could not continue as it had. The entire Notre Dame Island site was closed and three years later was completely rebuilt around a new rowing and canoe sprint basin for Montreal’s 1976 Summer Olympics.
In 1976, a fire destroyed the acrylic outer skin of Buckminster Fuller’s dome, and the previous year the Ontario pavilion was lost due to a major fire. After the 1981 season, the Saint Helen’s Island site was permanently closed. Both sites fell into disrepair with the remaining pavilions completely abandoned and vandalized. By 1984 the few remaining original exhibits were closed permanently.
After the final Man and His World summer exhibitions were discontinued, most pavilions and remnants were demolished between 1985 and 1987.
The former site for Expo 67 on Saint Helen’s Island and Notre Dame Island were incorporated into a municipal park called Parc des Îles, run by the city of Montreal. In 2000, the park was renamed to Parc Jean-Drapeau, after Mayor Jean Drapeau, who had brought the exhibition to Montreal.
Today very little remains of Expo67 pavillions, but there are some landmarks that remain. Here are some of the main ones.
The Concorde bridge still remains and can take you to Parc Jean Drapeau.
Place des Nations, where the opening and closing ceremonies were held, remains, but it is in an abandoned and is in a deteriorating state. It probably should have been torn down by now, but remains there for sentimental reasons, more than anything else. There is nothing unique about the venue for it to be kept and there have been calls to dismantle it.
La Ronde is still around, and since 2001 it has been leased to the New York amusement park company Six Flags. The Alcan Aquarium built for the Expo remained in operation for a number of decades until its closure in 1991.
The American pavilion’s metal-lattice skeleton with it’s Buckminster Fuller dome is now part of an environmental sciences museum called the Montreal Biosphere, and is certainly a well known Montreal landmark.
The France and Quebec pavilions have been repurposed into what is now known as the Montreal Casino. There was a significant amount of money invested into the structure to make it usable for that purpose.
In terms of the Canadian Pavilion, the distinctive inverted pyramid and much of the rest of the Canadian pavilion were dismantled during the 1970s. The remaining part is know as La Toundra Hall, and serves as a special events and banquet hall.
And finally there is Habitat 67, a condominium residence, which became an international sensation at the time and in 2009, it was designated a heritage site by the government of Quebec.
It is probably one of the most iconic legacies of Expo67 in Montreal. For this reason, it was recently celebrated on a new Canada Post stamp to commemorate the Expo67 legacy . Let’s learn a bit more about Habitat67 and how it came to be.
Habitat67 was the idea of a young architect named Moshe Safdie. In 1961, Safdie graduated from McGill University with a degree in architecture. While at the school, he wrote a thesis project on how you could create an affordable, mass-produced dwelling that also provided privacy and a garden for every resident.
After graduation Safdie had gone to work with Louis Kahn a famous architect based in Philadelphia. Safdie was approached by Sandy van Ginkel, his former thesis advisor, to develop a Master Plan for Expo 67. Safdie decided to propose his thesis as one of the pavilions and began developing his plan. Safdie was given the blessing of the Expo 67 Director of Installations, Colonel Edward Churchill, to build the project in spite of his relative youth and inexperience.
Habitat 67 comprises 354 identical, prefabricated concrete forms arranged in various combinations, reaching up to 12 stories in height. Together these units create 146 residences of varying sizes and configurations, each formed from one to eight linked concrete units.
The complex originally contained 158 apartments, but several apartments have since been joined to create larger units, reducing the total number. Each unit is connected to at least one private terrace, which can range from approximately 20 to 90 square metres in size.
The development was financed by the federal government, but is now owned by its tenants, who formed a limited partnership that purchased the building from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 1985. Safdie still owns a penthouse in the apartment building too.
Habitat67 also launched Safdie’s career to incredible heights, including the opportunity to design numerous projects including the National Gallery of Canada, the Quebec Museum of Civilization, Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.
Habitat67 is truly a significant idea, and its great Canada Post selected it as the first of 10 stamps to be issued over 5 weeks by Canada Post.
The stamp is in the shape of a Maple Leaf and the iconic Habitat67 is front and center.
Also the First Day Cover is also very impressive.
Now let’s turn to what’s next in this exciting Canada150 series. We have 9 more stamps coming over the next 4 weeks.
Once all the stamps are unveiled they will be made for sale on June 1st. Each of the 10 maple-leaf die-cut stamps measure 40 mm x 40 mm and are printed in six-colour lithography. The self-adhesive stamps will be available in booklets of 10 stamps and gummed panes of 10 stamps with circle perforations. Official first-day covers — one for each stamp design and each cancelled in Ottawa — and will be available in packs of 10 covers.
You can pre-order your stamps now on the Canada Post website. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what else Canada Post has in store for us in the coming weeks.
If this first stamp is any indication, I think we are in for a treat with stamps that will honour great moments, events and people of the last 50 years in Canadian history. And don’t worry, we’ll be covering those releases in future episodes, so stay tuned…
Now turning back to Expo67, for a moment, you can say it truly transformed Montreal. You can almost draw a line in terms of how the city looked before and after the event. It’s a legacy the people and the city are very proud of. So if you are in Montreal or plan to visit this year, make sure you join the celebration.
This year the organizers of Montreal375 announced a new Expo67 Passport you can get digitally via an App or like before, a paper one, as a nod to the history of Expo67. As you visit various events and museums, your Passport will be stamped, and you can relive a bit of nostalgia. I got mine this weekend, don’t forget to get yours.
Sources and other links for further reading & exploration:
- An amazing Expo67 site with pretty much everything you need to dive deep on Expo67: http://expo67.ncf.ca/
- The official Habitat67 website: http://www.habitat67.com/
- Tourisme Montreal: Expo 67 Then & Now
- Pictures of before and after Expo67
- CBC digital archives about Expo67
- Expo67 Ruins
