Expo 67 - Pavilion of Thailand

The Pavilion of Thailand was clearly one of Dad's favourite Expo subjects. Maybe he liked the funky spires or the little pool with the boat in it. Whatever the reason, it caught his attention.

He photographed it a number of times, and on different trips to Expo.

Expo 67 - The French and the Brits

This nice shot of Dad's shows the round French Pavilion and the towering British Pavilion. The French Pavilion is one of the few remaining pavilions. These days, it's a casino.

Expo 67 - Île Notre Dame

Dad at some point either owned or borrowed a 2x3 film camera, as this shot is scanned from a 2x3 negative. I think it's borrowed because all the 2x3 negatives in his collection seem to in quick bursts -- a quick bunch of photos at one event, then none, then a quick bunch there. We can only find six 2x3 Expo negatives in the collection, all taken at the same time and at more or less the same place. This one is a wide view of Île Notre Dame, the Canadian Pavilion on the right, to the tower of the British Pavilion on the left.

Expo 67 - La Ronde 1

My favourite place at Expo? Well, duh. Every four year-old's favourite place, La Ronde, the amusement park area. Here I am riding a water ride.

Expo 67 - Hovercraft

The Expo Hovercraft. Why there was an Expo hovercraft, I'm not sure. But I remember lining up and going for a ride in it.

Expo 67 - Panorama

I took a couple of dad's old Expo photos and made a panorama. We visted the Expo site at least once at night. I remember distinctly because we were riding around on one of the little monorails as it was getting dark and it suddenly stopped while were traveling out over the water. We had a long wait in the cool evening air before the monorail system was restarted.

Expo 67 - Shoreline

So this is...I think...from the south shore of Île Sainte-Hélèn looking across towards the rest of the Expo site on Île Notre Dame. You can clearly see the inverted pyramid of the Canadian Pavilion, the tower of the British Pavilion, and what I believe is also the Man the Producer Pavilion. Off at the far left is the Soviet Pavilion. This appeared to be a favourite place for Dad to take his photos from, as quite a few of his shots are from this vantage point.

Expo 67 - Soviet Pavilion - Colourized

I found an online colourizer and ran my dad's Soviet Pavilion photos through it. The results are somewht mixed. But interesting.
Most of my dad's Expo photos were black and white, but some were colour and you'll see some of those soon. But I'll post more colourized versions of his black and whites as we move through the summer.

Expo 67 - Soviet Pavilion 3

Our final look at the Soviet Pavilion.

Expo 67 - Soviet Pavilion 2

Another angle Dad took of the Soviet Pavilion, probably from one of the monorails. You can see just how big a building this was by the size of the people inside.

Expo 67- Soviet Pavilion

My dad's photos of the statue in front of the Soviet Pavilion. I'm photobombing in the first one.

The two images above are scanned from the negatives. Dad only made a print of the second negative, which scanned below. You can see he cropped it a bit for printing.

In the background, you can see the American Pavilion, Buckminster Fuller's iconic Geodesic Dome, as well as an elevated monorail track. The Dome is one of the few relics of Expo 67 that still stands, as most of the other pavilions were demolished in the 1980s. My memories of the Soviet Pavilion are not happy ones. I got separated from my parents and spent quite a while wondering around looking for them. One man yelled at me that he wasn't my father and told me to go away. That's when a guard found me just seconds before my parents did.