expo67

World's fairs aren't what they used to be. But then, neither is the world.

When Expo 67 officially opened 40 years ago this Friday, Canada was a different country. Montreal was still the biggest and most important city in the land, and its future – like that of the rest of the federation – shone as brightly as could be.

Canada was on a roll. What more proof was needed than Expo? Even now, four decades later, it is remembered as this country's finest hour, the moment when everything came together and Canada stepped onto the world stage a fully formed nation, the place where the future was unfolding.

By the time Expo closed its doors in October, 50 million people had visited. They came from across Canada – whose total population then was just 20 million – and around the globe.

Like countless other families that memorable summer, the Humes of Toronto piled into their car, an oversized Buick as I recall, and headed down Highway 401 to la Belle Province. Somewhere outside Montreal, we got lost, and for a while it seemed the trip would end in disaster.

"Might as well turn around and go home right now," stepfather announced to a chorus of adolescent groans.

Eventually, tired and sweaty, we made our way to the house we had rented for the week, and all ended – or rather began – brilliantly.

The memory grows dim, but to these then-teenaged eyes, Expo was the most exciting thing I had ever seen. It barely seemed real – all these extraordinary buildings, each filled with extraordinary things.

The glimmering, stainless-steel facades of the French pavilion; the amazing transparency of Buckminster Fuller's immense geodesic dome; the unfinished Union Jack atop the soaring tower of the British building; the cool elegance of the Czechoslovakian pavilion, which in my mind's eye glittered with hundreds of the most exquisite pieces of crystal ever beheld.

Then, of course, there was Canada's contribution, the unforgettable inverted pyramid, Katimavik.

No one had ever seen anything like it. It seemed to turn everything we knew literally on its head, upside down.

Wandering through the architectural marvels on Ile Sainte-Helene and Ile Notre-Dame, largely man-made islands in the St. Lawrence River, it seemed anything was possible – and here, in Canada.

The country might have been only 100 years old, but that didn't count. It wasn't history that mattered, but the future.

And if Expo told us anything, it was that the future belonged to us. You could see it being played out right in front of you; elevated people-movers humming through the sky, actually moving through buildings (well, one at least: the U.S. pavilion).

Then there was Habitat, Moshe Safdie's visionary proposal for housing in the city of tomorrow. Modular and mass-produced, yet each configuration was unique and somehow intimate and human.

The week flew by. In memory, the sun never set and the crowds, though enormous, never overwhelmed.

Four decades later, little remains on the Expo site. Habitat, now looking isolated and forlorn, never became the prototype it was meant to be. Though much more engaging than many other failed Utopias, it is a relic, a record of what might have been.

The French Pavilion, alone, degraded and rebuilt for permanence, has been turned into a casino. On most days, its front entrance is lined with buses bringing seniors from any number of clubs de l'age d'or. As if!

Little wonder that, from the perspective of this sad and cynical century, it seems not that Expo failed Canada but that Canada failed Expo. We could not live up to the promise. The future, we feel, has passed us by.

Historians will record, however, that even as Expo was being constructed, the FLQ was threatening to blow it up. And for all the optimism of 1967, Canada's centennial year, it is easy to forget that this country, and much of the world, was being torn apart by the Vietnam War, a nasty and pointless conflagration that haunts us still. It led to the death of 58,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese, and destroyed the myth of U.S. invincibility.

Expo did the opposite for Canada. Suddenly, works by Canadian architects, artists and designers found a place in an international context. Side by side with examples from around the globe, it became clear, perhaps for the first time, that we were the equals of anyone, no matter where they came from.

Perhaps it was this that enabled Canada finally to move beyond its historical colonial cringe and fundamentally change our national mythology. The process that began at Vimy was completed at Expo, where we shrugged off the notion that we were a mere colony and became instead a full-fledged nation. Still, the mere fact that Expo could be pulled off itself seemed almost miraculous. There was no shortage of people who thought it all a huge waste of time and money, and more than we could handle.

Then, as now, Canada was a nation beset by naysayers. But for once they were proved wrong.

Since then, the forces of negativity seem to have regained their position of pre-eminence, and the sense of confidence and unity that surged across the country is long gone.

Last fall, Toronto's dream of bidding for the 2015 World's Fair fell apart because three levels of government couldn't see past their mutual antipathy to get organized. In the end, we simply missed the deadline.

Events such as Expo, the most successful fair in history, no longer have the drawing power they had before the world was wired, giving us ways of experiencing things without having to go to see them for ourselves. The peculiarly Canadian mix of apathy and hostility displayed last year has filled the void left by Expo. So, too, has the loss of ambition that now besets the country.

Expo held up an alternative version of Canada, one that was considerably more creative and ambitious. Since 1967, Canada has turned inward and become a country in conflict with itself.

More important, perhaps, is the disappearance of the optimism and naïve faith in progress that lay at the heart of Expo. Belief in technology, for example, has given way to universal pessimism. That's hardly surprising. In the 21st century, nothing less than the continued viability of the planet is at stake.

Back in the summer of '67, which the late Pierre Berton called the "last good year," no such doubts clouded the horizon. Certainly, there were problems – Canada hadn't turned into a nation of Pollyannas – but there was a new-found sense of confidence, a feeling that we could deal with them.

The drive home, I remember, was quieter, more subdued. Exhilaration turned to exhaustion as Toronto came into view. The city had started to change, but the smell of Hogtown lingered.

No longer. Unlike Montreal and Canada in the '60s, 21st-century Toronto is an international city – only just, it's true, but a player nonetheless.

Expo survives in the mythology of Canada. Like all myths, it is only partially based on truth.

The fair might not have changed the world, or even Canada, but it did alter forever how we view them.

Forgot? Not yet born? Visit Expo in a flash

Take a virtual tour via flashplayer at National Archives Canada's website, collectionscanada.ca/05
/0533/053301_e.html