GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

41. FABULOUS and unforgettable 1967

In one pavilion line-up, a black family from a southern U.S. State told us about their "plywood motel" far from the Fair. We knew they were being charged too much. After a couple of days of heavy rain, there was water in their unit and major problems in the unpaved parking lot. Yet they shrugged those off because they enjoyed having white people treat them "as if we were ordinary folks". They said the owners and staff were especially nice to their two teenage sons.

Having travelled in the Southern States years after anti-discrimination laws were passed, we knew that racism remained strong, so we understood their attitude. Charlie reported to "the cheat line", emphasizing the family's satisfaction. He followed up and learned that the motel had lowered its room rates to appropriate levels immediately.

A friend from my Fribourg days wrote that the daughter of a New Zealand family, a 20-something on her way around the world, would spend a week in Montreal. Since my friend didn't know the City at all she asked me to check on Catherine's stay. Charlie said the hotel Barbara named was not appropriate for a young single woman, so I called the manager to say I would pick her up the morning after she arrived and she would continue her stay with us. He didn't object because he had time to relist the room with Logexpo.

Catherine went on to England, where she paused to earn money as a cartographer at Oxford University. "Life is what happens...". She met another cartographer, they married, bought a house, had five children. She exchanged Christmas cards with us into the 1990s, by which time at least three of the five had emigrated to somewhere. Visiting them, she and her husband completed the journey around the world she had begun in 1967.

The tiny Czechoslovakian pavilion was full of exquisite things and the most talked about. The U.S. one, in Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, expressed that country so succinctly that after my first visit I could remember every exhibit in it, from a space capsule to the 50 hats and caps of workers' uniforms, and fascinating hand-carved working wooden miniatures of agricultural and domestic machines that travelling salesmen had carried on horseback among settlers west of the Mississippi in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Journalists from around the world came with heads of state. When U.S. President Lyndon Johnson came for July 4, an American reporter told Charlie that special security agents were assigned to follow all the food prepared for him -- every step of the way from delivery van to his place at a head table or his hotel suite. (The president before him was assassinated.)

My husband responded that during the banquet for Queen Elizabeth II at the Helene de Champlain Restaurant on July 1, as each plated course was about to leave the kitchen a member of her entourage picked up a plate at random and handed it to the server "for Her Majesty". 

The Soviet Union's colossal pavilion was the most visited. Two of the four guests Charlie and I took there one day were recently retired weavers from a mill in Birmingham, England. They were guests of friends of ours in Hamilton, Ontario. The weavers had never travelled farther than London. One of them, like their Canadian hosts, wanted to sample new foods but the other, Nellie, wouldn't touch anything she "nevah et tuh 'ome". Thank heaven all restaurants had eggs and potatoes in stock.

The Russians showed off myriad technologies, particularly from their space program. There also were huge looms operating at slow speeds. A uniformed security guard stood at each one, although illustrated French and English signs explained how it worked. The guards were middle-aged men, probably multi-lingual secret police. They were not pleased as Nellie told us loudly that her mill in Birmingham had replaced every loom style in Russia's display with a newer generation or even two. She emphasized how much quieter the ones "tuh 'ome" were. The faces of a couple of guards reddened, but they didn't speak. 

Expo's World Festival of Entertainment was phenomenal, overwhelming in fact. We bought tickets for about 60 events, attended many free ones, saw and heard absolute perfection in performances by ensembles such as the Polish folk dance company Mazowsze, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (which no longer exists), the Spanish Riding School of Vienna (which does). The International Salon of Cartoons taught me to pay attention to that genre.

My father came away from Expo 67 quoting a thought from Hippocrates, mounted in huge bas-relief letters on a wall of the Greek Pavilion: Knowledge is the father of wisdom; mere opinion breeds ignorance. While he and Mom were visiting we discussed that at length because my husband objected a lot to doing "man in the street interviews" for TV or radio. They meant poking a microphone into someone's face and asking for their opinion about a current topic. Charlie found that intelligent-looking people never agreed to give opinions. Some paused to say, "I don't know all the facts" but others merely smiled and walked on.

Today's inane phone-in shows, the least expensive way to fill air time, are the result of such interview policies. Unfortunately, people with independent tongues say plenty and their blather sets the bar for popular opinion.

Charlie and I couldn't plan a vacation in 1967. However, as soon as possible after the big show closed on 27 October we left our beloved Maine Coon cat (we were enjoying his cleverness and sense of humour long before the breed was officially recognized) in a neighbour's care and headed south to see Colonial Williamsburg. Perfect weather and the autumnal palette of temperate zone vegetation accompanied us all the way. On Virginia's Skyline Drive one evening in mid-November, we sat at a picture window looking out over miles of magnificent Fall colours. The next morning the vast scene was covered by snow.

Back in Montreal we found a letter from Catherine. Her Mother had joined her in England. During two weeks they drove 500 miles through England, Wales, and Scotland, and "saw everything worth seeing". To visit Williamsburg and a few ante-bellum plantations, Charlie and I drove more than 3,000 miles in our two weeks. 

CHAPTER 41 of GLIMPSES -- 30