In the countdown to Canada's Expo 67, it was 878 days since the morning in 1964 when the first dump truck dropped the first load of fill into the St. Lawrence River off Montreal. All that seemed a long time ago as a 19-year-old Canadian Army cadet last week sprinted into the Place des Nations amphitheater and, before 5,250 invited dignitaries, handed a blazing torch to Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Grinning, Pearson tipped the flame toward a gas jet in a canister, and a fire flickered up—to burn night and day during the six-month life of Expo.
"The lasting impact of Expo 67," intoned the usually low-keyed Pearson, "will be in the dramatic object lesson we see before our eyes today—that the genius of man knows no national boundaries, but is universal." As he spoke, church bells chimed throughout Montreal, fireboats in the river blasted streams of water into the air, a flight of jet planes screamed overhead, and a fusillade of fireworks splashed in the sky, sending to earth a burst of parachute blossoms that carried the flags of each of the 62 participating nations.
"First Category." Thus began the greatest international exposition ever—the most spacious (6,000 acres), the costliest ($1 billion), the most imaginative and likely to be the most visited (some 10 million people are expected, twirling the turnstiles 35 million times). Since Queen Victoria and Prince Albert opened London's Great Exhibition in 1851, there have been dozens of "world's fairs." Some have left unforgettable landmarks (most notably, the Eiffel Tower from Paris' Exposition in 1889); some have simply left scars (the dilapidated architectural skeletons and sour aftertaste from the shill's paradise that was New York's 1964-65 fair). Only a handful have come near equaling the majesty of Brussels' classic production in 1958.
Expo 67, however, looks every bit as good as its superenthusiastic promoters promised (see following color pages). For one thing, the International Bureau of Exhibitions, which has been refereeing these things since 1928, classified it as an official "First Category Exposition" (the first ever in the Americas), as opposed to a run-of-the-mill world's fair, which emphasizes business exhibits and often-irksome commercialism. Beyond that, Expo 67 was dreamed up expressly to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Canada's national birth, and thus is powered by the energies and imagination of a proud and thriving people who have long yearned to prove that their country is considerably more than the U.S.'s backwoods halfbrother. "Anyone who says we aren't a spectacular people should see this," said Pearson. "We are witness today to the fulfillment of one of the most daring acts of faith in Canadian enterprise and ability ever undertaken." And so it is.