(5 of 5)
Volcanoes & the Minotaur. At La Ronde, Expo's 135-acre amusement area, there is an aquarium with penguins, a Pioneer Land where gun fights take place every hour, a "safari" through a man-made jungle (where kids can ride on an elephant, a zebra, an ostrich or a llama). For thrill seekers, there is the Gyrotron, a $3,000,000 contraption that allows tourists to strap themselves into miniature rail cars and then be hurtled through a maze of environments that begins with a terrifyingly realistic "orbit" among the stars, careens on through the hellish jaws of a live volcano crater. On opening day, the mechanism broke down, stranding passengers in the volcano and providing Expo with its first mishap.
The amount of film footage on show at Expo is staggering. Nearly every exhibit has incorporated some kind of a motion-picture presentation to supplement its static sights, and it has been estimated that a cinema addict could spend every minute of Expo's 183 days at a screen and still not see every frame available. One of the most sensational flicks: the mad, mad show at the Labyrinth, a five-story pavilion built by the National Film Board of Canada. The feature is prosaically called "The Story of Man," but during the 45-minute film the viewers move from chamber to chamber, eye-witnessing a re-creation of the Greeks' Minotaur myth. At times, members of the audience see the movie as it flickers on a floor screen; at others, they watch it reflected in a mirrored-glass prism. They wind up in a near-psychedelic setting in which films are projected onto five different screens simultaneously. Another sure crowd pleaser is the Czechoslovakian Kino-automat, at which spectators themselves direct the film (see color opposite).
However sensational Expo's wonders, or however sad the inevitable snafus to come, its very existence is a symbol of the vigor and enthusiasm of the Canadians who conceived an "impossible" idea and made it come true. The morning following the official ceremonies last week, several thousand people milled about the ticket booths at Place d' Ac-cueil awaiting the public opening at 9:30 a.m. A voice boomed over a loudspeaker: "The time is 9:29." As the seconds ticked away, the crowd began a bilingual countdown—"ten, neuf, eight, sept, six, cinq, four, trois, two, un." Then, with a roar, the first visitors burst in. Watching them swarm over the grounds, one official, who had spent four exhausting years building Expo 67, said quietly: "I get the feeling that it isn't ours any more." But that, as he and millions of Canadians well knew, was the point—and the pride—of the imaginative new world they had built along the riverbanks of Montreal.