Expo 67

The 1967 International and Universal Exposition – or Expo 67, as it was commonly known – was a World’s Fair held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from 27 April to 29 October 1967.

The Expo was Canada’s main celebration during its centennial year, although the fair was originally intended to be held in Moscow, to help the Soviet Union celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. For various reasons, the Soviets decided to cancel, and Canada was awarded it in late 1962.

The Ed Sullivan Show was broadcast live from Expo 67 on 7 May and 21 May. Guests on the shows included The Supremes, Petula Clark and The Seekers.

When Expo 67 ended, the site and most of the pavilions continued as an exhibition called “Man and His World”, open during the summer months from 1968 until 1984. By then, most of the buildings (which had not been designed to last beyond the original exhibition) had deteriorated and were dismantled.

Today, the islands that hosted the world exhibition are used as parkland and for recreational use, with only a few remaining structures from Expo 67 to show that the event was held there.

An episode of the 1970s television series Battlestar Galactica was filmed at the Expo site in 1979. The Expo structures were used to represent a city on an alien world where the people had all been killed by a long-ago war. The 1979 TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century used footage of the British pavilion as buildings in the futuristic “New Chicago”.

The former American Pavilion became the Montreal Biosphère, an environmental museum on Saint Helen’s Island. The abandoned British pavilion building was used in episodes of the TV show Quantum Leap doubling as the site of the Quantum Leap facility.

Video