Vancouver Expo '86

The Event International exposition

Date May 2 to October 13, 1986

Place Vancouver, British Columbia

Vancouver Expo ’86 coincided with the city’s centennial and the arrival on the Pacific coast of the first passenger train. It was the second time that Canada had held a world’s fair in the period after World War II, and the fair benefited from a terrorism scare in Europe that kept many potential travelers within North America’s borders.

The 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communications (known as Vancouver Expo ’86) was a world’s fair sanctioned by the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) and held in Vancouver, British Columbia, from May 2 through October 13, 1986. The fair, whose theme was “Transportation and Communication: World in Motion, World in Touch,” was the first Canadian world’s fair since Expo ’67. The latter fair, held in Montreal during the Canadian centennial, was one of the most successful world’s fairs in history, attracting some 50 million people at a time when Canada’s population was only 20 million. Expo ’86 was categorized by the BIE as a “class 2, special category fair,” reflecting its specific emphases on transportation and communications. The government of Canada contributed $9.8 million to the exposition’s cultural projects, including $5.8 million for the program at the Canada Pavilion, $2 million to enable Canadian artists to tour other centers en route to or from the exposition, $1.5 million for Canadian participation in the World Festival, and $500,000 to fund cultural projects for Vancouver’s centennial celebrations.

The exposition was opened by England’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana and Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney on May 2, 1986. It featured pavilions from fifty-four nations and numerous corporations. Expo ’86’s participants were given the opportunity to design their own pavilions or to opt for less expensive standardized modules. Each module was approximately two and one-half stories high and had floor space equal to one-third of a city block. The design was such that any number of the square modules could be placed together in a variety of shapes. The roof design allowed the interior exhibit space to be uninterrupted by pillars.

Expo ’86 was held on the north shore of False Creek, along Vancouver’s inner-city waterway. The seventy-hectare site featured over eighty pavilions and many indoor and outdoor performance venues. Canada’s pavilion was located on a pier not contiguous with the rest of the site. To reach the pavilion, visitors would take Vancouver’s newly opened SkyTrain rapid rail system. After the exposition, the pier became Canada Place, one of Vancouver’s most recognizable landmarks. Other Canadian host pavilions included Canadian provincial and territorial pavilions for Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. Canadian Pacific’s main feature was a film, Rainbow War, while Telecom Canada presented a Circle-Vision 360 movie, Portraits of Canada-Images du Canada.

A geodesic dome, known as Expo Centre, represented a style of architecture first seen in the U.S. pavilion at Montreal in 1967. At Expo ’86, the U.S. pavilion was devoted to space exploration in the wake of the Challengerspace shuttle disaster, and the displays from the Soviet Union were colored by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. These dueling pavilions represented one of the last face-offs between the two superpowers before the end of the Cold War only three years later. Corporate and nongovernmental-organization (NGO) pavilions included those representing Air Canada, the local BCTV television station, Canadian National, and General Motors—which had one of the more popular exhibits, “Spirit Lodge,” a live show augmented with holographic and other special effects.

Impact

In all, 22 million people attended Expo ’86, and, despite a deficit of 311 million Canadian dollars, it was considered a tremendous success. The event was later viewed as a transitional moment for Vancouver, which transformed from a sleepy provincial backwater to a city with some global clout. In particular, the exposition marked a strong boost to tourism for the province. It was also the last twentieth century world’s fair to take place in North America.

Bibliography

Anderson, Robert, and Eleanor Wachtel, eds. The Expo Story. Madeira Park, B.C.: Harbour, 1986.

Findling, John E., and Kimberly Pelle, eds. Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851-1988. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.

Kahn, E. J. “Letter from Vancouver.” The New Yorker, July 14, 1986, 73-81.