The Eighties in America - Salem Press (2009)

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 Inter-
national 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 suc-
      cessful 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 communi-
      cations. The government of Canada contributed
      $9.8 million to the exposition’s cultural projects, in-
      cluding $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 exposi-
      tion, $1.5 million for Canadian participation in the
      World Festival, and $500,000 to fund cultural proj-
      ects 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 cor-
      porations. Expo ’86’s participants were given the op-
      portunity 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 contigu-
      ous with the rest of the site. To reach the pavilion, vis-
      itors would take Vancouver’s newly opened SkyTrain
      rapid rail system. After the exposition, the pier be-
      came Canada Place, one of Vancouver’s most recog-

nizable landmarks. Other Canadian host pavilions

included Canadian provincial and territorial pavil-

ions for Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, On-

tario, 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, repre-

sented a style of architecture first seen in the U.S. pa-

vilion at Montreal in 1967. At Expo ’86, the U.S. pa-

vilion was devoted to space exploration in the wake

of theChallengerspace shuttle disaster, and the dis-

plays 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 in-

cluded those representing Air Canada, the local

BCTV television station, Canadian National, and

General Motors—which had one of the more popu-

lar 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 dol-

lars, it was considered a tremendous success. The

event was later viewed as a transitional moment for

Vancouver, which transformed from a sleepy provin-

cial backwater to a city with some global clout. In par-

ticular, the exposition marked a strong boost to tour-

ism for the province. It was also the last twentieth

century world’s fair to take place in North America.

Further Reading

Anderson, Robert, and Eleanor Wachtel, eds.The

Expo Stor y.Madeira Park, B.C.: Harbour, 1986.

Findling, John E., and Kimberly Pelle, eds.Historical

Dictionar y 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.

Martin J. Manning

See also Canada and the British Commonwealth;

Canada and the United States;Challengerdisaster;

Knoxville World’s Fair; Louisiana World Exposition;

Mulroney, Brian.

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