Meet me at the fair
In the summer of 1967, the eyes of Canada, and indeed the world, were focused on a handful of purpose-built islands that emerged in the St. Lawrence River just off Montreal to showcase a hyper-modern international picture of the possibility and promise of the future.
Expo 67 remains an iconic symbol of human achievement and potential. Now, two Concordia professors have launched a scholarly volume that examines the extraordinary impact of the ephemeral symbols and souvenirs it generated in Expo 67: Not Just a Souvenir (University of Toronto Press).
Johanne Sloan, associate professor of Art History, and a co-editor of the volume, sees Expo as arguably “the end of a long line of these kinds of events.” Stretching back to the world’s fairs of the mid-19th century, these exhibitions create “a kind of global encounter, a kind of colonial display and a kind of comparative exhibit of what different nations were capable of – putting new commodities, new technologies and new things on display.”
Sloan worked with co-editor Rhona Richman Kenneally, Chair of Concordia’s Department of Design and Computation Arts, on a series of projects that led to Not Just a Souvenir’s publication. In 2004, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) held an exhibition called The 60s: Montréal Thinks Big. Within that, Sloan and Richman Kenneally organized a symposium and an exhibit in the CCA vitrines, marking the first formal collaboration between Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts (FOFA) and the CCA. The symposium included many strong, scholarly papers examining Expo 67 from various perspectives, and the exhibit displayed ephemeral mementos and postcards culled from collectors and individuals.
“Johanne and I were fortunate that [CCA founding director] Phyllis Lambert agreed with us that while Montreal did indeed think big in the ’60s, the Expo 67 experience was also about thinking small,” Richman Kenneally recalls.
“We discovered those subtle gestures, the postcards, the clothing, the souvenirs became part of the message carried forward by people after Expo 67. So the buildings aren’t there anymore but Johanne, at this moment, is wearing her Expo 67 ring. Everybody we talked to loves the fact that they can look at the artifacts that they have and connect them to the memories.”
Sloan also remembers recognizing the meaning captured in the jewellery and platters, postcards and stamps that people collected during the event, along with the ubiquitous passport that was their ticket to the site and its exhibits. “We thought, these [souvenirs] are great things to look at and admire, and people get a kick out of them, but this is a great opportunity to develop a material culture methodology that would really take seriously these kinds of little ephemeral bits of stuff that are not monumental the way the architecture is.”
Taking seriously the material produced during Expo 67 “reconfigured the whole understanding of what value is in terms of making connections between artifacts and memory and construction of identity,” says Richman Kenneally, underscoring the importance of these themes at Expo itself.
She adds that Expo “was very much a laboratory, a kind of beacon against which all kinds of changes took place in Montreal.” Not only was the city itself reconstructed with elements like the Metro, but the event opened up discussions “about how a modern city might want to look, how it should be structured and what kind of facilities its citizens should have.”
The world was convening in Montreal during centenary celebrations across the country. Expo 67 became the ultimate expression of “a coming of age of a country that was finding its own momentum, both as a member of the Commonwealth but also a country juxtaposed to the United States,” says Kenneally.
The centenary placed Canada in the spotlight and Expo was the expression of the best it had to offer in terms of art, design, construction and technology, with Montreal as the “huge glimmering, glittering target that everyone was supposed to be aiming for that summer.”
At the same time, Sloan stresses that the editors were wary of presenting an overly nostalgic, romanticized picture of a unified country setting an international example. Much as flag-waving nationalism was implicit in the construction of Expo 67, the moment of Canada’s centenary was also marked by a burgeoning sense of Quebec nationalism that was moving in a very contradictory direction.
It was important for both researchers to incorporate a wide range of perspectives, from a range of disciplines, to move beyond the existing Expo 67 scholarship that focused on some of the architecture and technological innovations (like a multiscreen precursor to IMAX cinema) that were introduced at the site. These differing fields are reflected in the 13 chapters of the book, on issues ranging from food to tabloid culture to the changes in Montreal’s urban landscape that were engendered by Expo.
Both researchers agree that the research on Expo and its era is growing as the 1960s slip from being considered contemporary culture to constitute an object of historical attention. That distance is evident socially, for example in terms of gender roles.
One chapter addresses the then-prevalent culture of girl watching. “There were these officially constituted clubs of girl watchers in the ’60s who determined Montreal was the epicentre in ’67 for this kind of activity,” explains Sloan. Hostesses, charged with greeting, guiding and informing all visitors, were featured in each pavilion. And while some wore ultra-modern miniskirts with go-go boots and pillbox hats, others wore the folkloric garb of the nation they represented, or some combination of the two. In that context, Expo also becomes a microcosm of the issues of the day and the changing way women were perceived in public space.
Richman Kenneally acknowledges the “fascination, the abiding significance of Expo 67,” not only for the collectors and researchers who participated in this project. Type “Expo 67” into eBay’s search bar and over 800 items are listed… including a volume of Expo 67: Not Just a Souvenir.
Listen to the full interview with coeditors Sloan and Richman Kenneally: