Expo shut down in 1982. Mr. Robert Lapalme had asked me to design a humour museum. Andy Nulman of the Just for Laughs Festival opened his first. I am still developing the Montreal cartoon Club for the Quartier des Spectacles. I was working on a pavilion called Symphony in Stone to be placed in the Man and Life section of the Man the explorer complex in 1982. I have now finished the exhibits for a museum for the Main based on certain architectural symbols.
I have too many stories to list here having grown up in the pre and post Expo design world. This is hard on me because there are a lifetimes incites and I want to communicate everything. Not enough has been said about the post expo man and his World. There were hundreds of pavilions many of them much better than at the original Expo. Without going into details:
there was the Sports Pavilion (formerly Canada),
Old Sleighs (Ontario)
Belles of Yesteryear and Science fiction (formerly great Britain).
Ferrovia (formerly Maine).
Drug Pavilion (formerly NY State)
Hunting and cryogenetics (Man and Life)
Strange Strange World (formerly Man and the Oceans)
Humour Pavilion (former Israel)
Interpol (pulp and paper)
Illusions (formerly Pulp and Paper)
Pirates of the Carribean (Cuba)
Ireland, Spain, Pakistan, Bulgaria, and relocated Czeckoslovakia.
Geology Pavilion (European community)
Space (Man the producer Pavilion)
Fire department (Man the Provider)
Biosphere Aviary (American Pavilion)
Poland (formerly Vermont)
SPECTROPHONIA (one of my favourites with a musical theatre presenting Peter and the Wolf)
Liason (with giant chess set)
360 degree cinema (featuring a new film from Osaka.)
Holography ((old Alcan auditorium)
Air canada (with this wonderful flying saucer-pre ET like at Universal Studios!)
Iran with this amazing Persian artist who made these beautiful stage props including a great cardboard horse).
Bulgarian Puppet Theatre in the beer hall.
United States made it back to the Biosphere one year. Walt Disney company put in a giant redwood tree.
Opera (in the old Italian pavilion - another favourite - I believe Mayor Drapeau organized this one personally).
Austria with an exhibit on music and musicians (in same old Austrian Pavilion)
The bandshell on Ille St. Helen beside the kiosks was one of my favourite sites as well. The kids from Westmount High School put on a wonderful review that I remember as being one of the incredible performances, I don't know if that was at expo or man and his World).
I also saw Jerry Lewis perform at Place des Nations. For years it also served as an outdoor theatre. This was in the days before street festivals.
A robotic ball that rolled around the site on its own outside of the Biosphere. I would like to know who was the sculptor who created that wonderful fountain at the entrance to la Ronde often bathed in Ultraviolet light.
MIRAGE THE GREAT SHOW ON DOLPHIN LAKE AND VOLCANOZER - WOW - FIRST IN 2D THAN 3D. Never saw the first production thou - something about an underwater voyage. For those who loved Expo these were really incredible post-Expo amusements. If you haven't been to a really good theme park - make sure its next on your agenda. Its been 40 year since Expo. We have some small new attractions planned for North of Montreal and Downtown. I also have a major theme park on the drawing boards. Marvel's Jack Kirby had me do some mock ups years ago but the money never came through - same story again - I was promised a model by Heavy Metal and their budget wasn't big enough. So I struggled along on my own. Now I've become one of the greatest designers on the planet.
Jack Dunham was a friend I met. He was a cartoonist. Said he worked on 25 Disney films including the 3 caballeros (he was director of mexican production). Checks out -there is a picture of him on diving board at Walts Party with Disney writer, and other friend.
He was also the lighting engineer, one of the 4 original bosses at La Ronde. He worked at Astral and did animated commercials for Molsons. Also created St. Hubert BBQ CHICKEN.
My fathers uncles grand-daughter married a Mr. Deitsch. His step mother and the family always talked about him either selling a house to or the house of Jack Benny. When I went to visit Disneyland I never got to see this person because they lived somewhere exclusive in Beverly Hills. However I stayed at Sheila Tinkoffs, the sister in West Covina. I was given my first puppet - a poodle by this woman as a child. I then started to paint cartoons on the inside of record jackets, touche turtle, bugs bunny. yogi bear, huckleberry hound, donald duck and of course mickey mouse. My parents had a collection that included Mickey Katz pajamas, Louis Armstrong and cha cha cha music.
I loved mighty mouse, and my record of the speeches of John F. Kennedy. I saw the Beatles when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan television show. It was a trajedy when the American president died. We were all so sad. My school bus driver came into class and told us everything. We were all dismissed early and that was all that was on television for a week.
LETS SEE - other pavilions. Civilizations museum and Cite Cine in the French pavilion. Mayor Drapeau saw me touting my architectural notes after the Man and his World closed and decided to bring in the real thing. He was a friend of the egyptian historian Lapalme. His humour museum used the symbol of the Egyptian god of humour Bet. When I met Mr. Lapalme he showed me a picture of an Egyptian papyrus that had been painted humerously with a lion playing a game with an antelope.
In 1969 on Valentines day Mr. Drapeau sent me a letter saying he was encouraged by my support and deeply touched from the bottom of his heart. Years later he brought in real Egyptian sculptures to the palace of Civilization and than brought this collection to Expo 86 and built a special pavilion for it there. I had been present with my history displays at the opening of the du College metro station.
That's the one with the amazing stained glass by Lyse Charland Favretti. Mr. Lapalme had been a legends person and gotten into fights with Madame Ferron about the Champs de Mars metro design. Well everything there turned out well. Mrs. Ferrons designs and glass are pleasing. Mr. Lapoalme was sort of the local Irving Berlin. He liked history and stories. Irving was a coon or conte man and didn't like Jazz and Swing and wrote wonderful pieces like 'I'm dreaming of a White Christmas'. Everyone has there piece of history I guess - its one big dysfunctional family.
Theres this write up thou that Mr. Lapalme's son disliked him and used a pseudonom when creating the stained glass for Berri metro. If you look at the Lapalme ancestry you will find his son was simply using the name that an ancestor had chosen when he came to America.
Enough about the lapalmes.
Mr. Charles Bertrand I met at the Agrignon Park Zoo. He was the chief designer for Man and his World and he made the children's story book creations in LaFontaine parks 'Jardin des Merveilles.'
I know alot about him but I'll let him tell the story or recount it some other time.
I also met Mr. Lamb of the National Film Board. He later created Karate kid.
HAZARATH is a friend who came over in 1970 after Expo 67 from Trinidad. He is a great artist and an expert drummer.
DEBORAH MACKENZIE founded a school. Her father had brought her here in 67 to see the Expo from Vancouver. I worked with her Innovative Dance Theatre to create the Halloween Adventure under CJAD radio in 1991.
In 1973 I invited Ray Affleck, Joe Baker, Harry Parnass, Bruce walker, Gerald Isles, Henry Rothschild, to a conference on the environment at Vanier CEGEP.
I had the privalege to know Norman Slater, the man who detailed the windows for the Chateau Champlain hotel. I remember my father stopping the car there while it was under construction. The steel frame was an incredible site, He had bought me a girder and panel building set from the Farmers Market in Laval. I would always want to be an architect - once I found out what the word meant.
This building was just up the street from the post office where my father had worked some times for 22 hours a day. He brought me a stamp book fom my Uncle Hillel Diamond's Science Shop in Toronto and I collected stamps from countries around the world. I ponned my collection once for 400 dollars to take a trip to New York thinking I might find a job there in cartooning, penciling or inking or something. I had been the best in class at Macdonald college and had been chosen to draw and ink renderings for the 1976 Olympic games. No way hose. The people at DC on the 78th floor of Rockefeller Centre wanted already completed works. Never got my stamp bookback either. The man who took it divorced his wife and disappeared back to Italy.
As I said too many incites into people and life. I have several volumes of stories waiting for some publisher to get interested.
There was a wild animal act in a cage outside the man and life exhibit. Reminds me of the images of the lions at Universal studios I see in old photos of Los Angeles.
Mr. Bertrand had a love for old Quebec and turned the scouting pavilion into the Village d'autrefois. He printed out a newsbulletin that included a picture of a sketch for a fair on St. Helenes island first proposed in 1896!
The kodak pavilion was turned into a giant camera so children could understand how photograhs are made. One year this was also the postage stamp pavilion. I remember also some kind of new movie in the former CN pavilion. I used to love the gothic base of the man the Producer complex where gondollas occasionally passed through.
One year the Gernan pavilion by Frei Otto became the site for a childrens pavilion. This was the perfect kind of space. I would like to see more of his buildings.
The Mormon church took over the Western provinces pavilion, and I can't remember what they ever did with the Belgium pavilion. There was a beautiful Yamaha organ on the ground floor of the Australian pavilion with a master organist.
I remenber that there wass a beautiful lake near the Soviet pavilion with a nice looking beer garden at the edge.
At Expo there were continuous ethnic shows in the Soviet theatre. Many pamphlets on Soviet republiks were given out. The cosmos theatre was a special moving platform and showed their space heroes.
However it was one of the first buildings to be taken away from Expo. In fact all the soviet block countries had been sold, still exist and have been relocated elsewhere. The Yugoslavian pavilion repainted with a ship mural as a museum in Newfoundland looks better today than it did at Expo. Expo didn't have enough murals or graphiti. The Hannover Expo could have profited culturally from this cheap mistake but there were no young Otto wagners there to turn the situation around for the 21st century. Meet Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.
The labyrinth was pleasantly turned into the useful headquaters for Katimavik youth program. I believe there was even a swimming pool in there. Polymer never regained its forme self. Korea had some good days at the post office pavilion. There was a wonderful horse jumping arena on Ille St. Helene where I sketched some of the young riders. Japan, I had wanted that for my cartoon club but a Mr. Tringle said it was impossible.
There was a beautiful dolls pavilion that I believe was originally
on Cite du Havre and which I saw again in the Scandinavian pavilion - wow. This was the real thing, not that aweful pepsi installation by Walt Disney called Its a Small World. Real dolls are the real thing. Mr. Bertrand was a toy collector and got me interested in their history.
Before Expo opened I had a chance to tour the site while it was being constructed. That was one of the first magical experiences I had of architecture.
I would love to have met Antonio gaudi and I have read of the work of Nikki St. Phall. This Expo anniversary has brought to me know much about Expo 67 that I hadn't known, and I thought I had seen everything.
My father had been invited to the opening of the metro in 1966. He was the accountant for Gerry Sneider, a council member. I cycled my bike out to the station that October than had it taken way for a week. My father had seen me riding there. Three years later I proposed building cycling paths to a council of mayors.
I ued to love the En ville magazine which had stories about Expo, and Fortune magazine which sometimes had advertisements with a futuristic bent. These were the days of here come the 70s and the Canada design centre in Place Bonaventure.
Than came Expo 70. I never went there but one of my mothers friends visited there and sent me back a set of the most beautiful postcards!
They knew my love of Expo - everyone knew I was not an Expo fan - I was THE EXPO.