The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds

Tom Hawthorn

Description

At first, Canadians showed little interest in marking the centennial. The announcement of a federal program to plan the celebration was met with initial indifference. After all, the event to be celebrated was spectacularly uninteresting—the nation was founded not in blood and revolution, but by discussion and negotiation, bewhiskered men in nineteenth-century frock coats sitting around tables for palaver. But a funny thing happened in the weeks leading to New Year’s Day, 1967. Canadians embraced the official plans for a celebration and, encouraged by government largesse, began making plans of their own. For one happy, giddy, insane year, a normally reserved people decided to hold a blockbuster party from coast to coast to coast.

Initiatives ranged from epic canoe trips and dangerous dogsled treks to bathtub races. An Albertan town decided to build a UFO landing pad. Hundreds of other centennial projects can still be found in almost every city and hamlet across Canada. The best athletes in the hemisphere gathered for the Pan American Games in Winnipeg. The climax of the party was the world’s fair held on man-made islands in the middle of the St. Lawrence River near Montreal.

Richly illustrated with period photographs and ephemera, here is the story of that fun, exciting year, told in the same giddy spirit with which Canadians celebrated. Uncover the strange and unique ways that individual Canadians marked the occasion, the birth of traditions, and the moment when Canadians discovered who they were and got a hint about who they were to become in this modern age. Once hewers of wood and pliers of water, they discovered a talent for literature, for design, for athletics, for innovation. And above all, it was a party never to be forgotten. Fifty years later, Canadians are once again celebrating a major milestone in their history, and once again, things are starting off with a collective yawn. Will the national spirit once again burst into flame? It could—if Canadians take a cue from the unlikely, inspiring story of The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds and Found Their Country.

Informations

• Publié par: Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781771621519
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 18 Mo

Extrait

CaNAdiaNs


mIndS


los t * their


AND FOUND THEIR COUNTRY


The Year


The Centennial of 1 9 6 7














Tom Hawthorn




The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds And Found Their Country


ii


Dedication
To John and Nellie, who won life’s jackpot by being born in Canada



More than 100 million copies of this 5 ¢ commemo- rative stamp were issued. It depicts Canada’s land mass on the globe, the new national flag adopted two years earlier, and Stuart Ash’s centennial symbol. Photo: Canada Post


Copyright © 2017 Tom Hawthorn 1 2 3 4 5 — 21 20 19 18 17
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca , 1 - 800 - 893 - 5777 , [e-mail] .
Douglas and McIntyre ( 2013 ) Ltd. P.O. Box 219 , Madeira Park, BC , v0n 2h0 www.douglas-mcintyre.com
Edited by Cheryl Cohen Indexed by Kyla Shauer Design by Diane Robertson
Printed and Bound in Canada
Douglas and McIntyre ( 2013 ) Ltd. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $ 153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
library and archives canada cataloguing in publication Hawthorn, Tom, author
The year Canadians lost their minds and found their country : the Centennial of 1967 / Tom Hawthorn.
Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978 - 1 - 77162 - 150 - 2 (softcover).-- ISBN 978 - 1 - 77162 - 151 - 9 ( HTML )
1 . National characteristics, Canadian. 2 . Nationalism--Canada. 3 . Canada--Centennial celebrations, etc. I. Title.
FC623 .C 4 H 39 2017 971 . 064 ' 4 C 2017 - 901820 - 5 C 2017 - 901821 - 3







Front cover images, left to right, top to bottom: Library and Archives Canada/Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition fonds/ e 000988792 ; Library and Archives Canada/Centennial Commission fonds/ e 001098962 ; Library and Archives Canada/Centennial Commission fonds/ a 185511 ; Library and Archives Canada/ Department of Health fonds/e 011161211 ; Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation, 1 . 0123 . 06 ; Library and Archives Canada/Centennial Commission fonds/a 185522 ; Library and Archives Canada/Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition fonds/ e 000990869 ; Illustration by Teresa Karbashewski; Library and Archives Canada/Centennial Commission fonds/C- 024559 .
Back cover images, left to right, top to bottom: Library and Archives Canada/Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition fonds/ e 000990908 ; Photograph by Walter E. Frost / City of Vancouver Archives AM1506 -S 2 - 3 -: CV A 447 - 1320 ; Library and Archives Canada/Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition fonds/e 000996547 ; Library and Archives Canada/Centennial Commission fonds/e 001098956 ; Photo by Hubert Figuière / Flickr CC BY - SA 2 . 0 ; Library and Archives Canada/Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition fonds/e 000996022 ; Canada Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA - 142087 ; Library and Archives Canada/Credit: Malak Karsh/Malak Karsh fonds/e 011169444 .



1 2 3


7 8 9












iii


Contents


v Preface


The Giddy Year
1 1967 Before, During and After the World’s Fair
Official Centennial
9 From Fire, Bells and Coins to Go-Go Tartan
100 Years of Gratitude
45 Canadians Take Up Challenge with Gusto


Sports
125 A Shining Year for Athletes
Expo 67
147 Centennial Centrepiece a Wild Success
Ongoing Reminders
177 From Self-Government to a UFO Pad


191 Photo Credits
193 Acknowledgments
196 Index


4 5 6


Happy Birthday(s)
81 January 1, July 1 and Other Fresh Starts
Music and Festivals
95 Celebrating with Many a Song and Dance
Military Moments
117 Saluting the Centennial in Style



The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds And Found Their Country


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v




T he canada of 1968 was a profoundly different place than the Canada of 1966 . The year in between, when Canadians took hesitant steps toward celebrating what we had achieved, led to a renewed interest in the question of who we were and where we were going. All that was to come—including Trudeaumania; the state getting out of the bedrooms of the nation; women demanding an equal place in society; and massive changes to the population through immigration—was made possible during Centennial Year. It was the beginning of a new sense of national identity, one in which race, culture and language would play lesser roles than we had become accustomed to in the country’s first century.
We invited the world to celebrate with us in 1967 . By the time the final birthday candle had been blown out, we had more of a global perspective. The Canada of 2017 owes more to decisions made in the wake of 1967 than to the negotiations conducted in 1867 .
The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds and Found Their Country is not a history, nor an exercise in sentimental longing. Many Canadians—the young, which is to say anyone under fifty; and new arrivals, which is to say anyone who immigrated here any time in the past half-century—have no memory


Preface


A birthday party for children was held on Parliament Hill on July 1 featuring clowns, balloons, dancers and a Punch-and-Judy puppet show. Each child got a cupcake, too. Photo: Library and Archives Canada



The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds And Found Their Country


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of what happened in 1967 . What lies between these covers are stories that will help us to appreciate the audacity of those who sought the grand gesture in experiencing their country. One does not set off down the Trans-Canada Highway on foot, as young Hank Gallant did, or attempt to canoe and portage a continent, without desiring to test oneself against a majestic, unforgiving land.
This book is not so much a single narrative as a scrapbook of vignettes, anecdotes and factual tidbits (okay, trivia) that are loosely divided into sections after the opening overview essay, “The Giddy Year.” I hope that the collection serves as a portrayal of an unforgettable, optimistic time, one to be relived by those in their fifties and older, and one to be explored by those who missed out on the fun.
Before I started this project, I had never heard of British Columbia home- steader Ida DeKelver, who trekked—accompanied by a pair of donkeys—from British Columbia through the Rockies to her Saskatchewan birthplace during Centennial Year.
Sometimes, I came across a coincidence that made Canada seem a small place. Eugene Boyko, the filmmaker responsible for the panoramic aerial view that gained the centennial project Helicopter Canada an Oscar nomination, had earlier done a short documentary on a Montreal housing project. As a boy, I had watched from this same housing project the building of a subway that would carry visitors to Expo 67 . The International and Universal Exhibition would come to be remembered as a highlight of Canada’s Centennial Year.
—
one of my earliest memories: I am looking out our second-storey apartment window at men and equipment working in the street below. It is the mid- 1960 s and we live in the Habitations Jeanne-Mance housing project near downtown Montreal. These modernist apartment buildings have recently replaced a red-light district, demolished in the post-war, slum-clearing reform movement. The street below has wooden stockades erected along both sides of the roadway like a long narrow fort.
Below the blacktop, tunnel-digging machinery bores through rock. The Metro is being built. Three blocks away, a huge hole in the ground marks the site of the main terminus of the new system, where two lines are to converge. (And, after Expo 67 is announced, a third line will be added beneath the other two.) The dirt dug from beneath our street will be dumped into the St. Lawrence River to help form the islands that will be home to the world’s fair.



Preface


vii


A few years later, as Expo 67 opens in April, we are living in the leafy Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood in a small apartment building on a cul-de-sac sandwiched between train tracks and an escarpment. The world’s fair is impossible to ignore. It is on television and in the newspapers, talked about in class and featured in a wall-sized poster at our nearest coffee shop.
From some vistas downtown, I can see the Buck