One Brief Shining Moment

Expo 67 has come down to us through the filter of nostalgia as a unique moment of national achievement. So successful was it that it appeared to change the way we Canadians thought about ourselves. We were not the boring, sober-sided backwater of a country we thought we were. Instead, the fair revealed us to be young, sophisticated, modern, edgy. And judging by the acclaim lavished on it by the international press, the rest of the world thought so too. For a while at least, it was hip to be Canadian. Expo was the greatest thing we had ever done as a nation, pronounced journalist Peter C. Newman. “It’s fabulous,” he wrote. “It’s the sun and the moon and the stars…” Our historian-in-chief, Pierre Berton, even wrote a book titled 1967: The Last Good Year, in which he called the fair a “miracle,” “one of the shining moments in our history, up there with the building of the Pacific railway or the victory at Vimy Ridge.” Because it took place in Quebec, Expo seemed to...