Favourite Things

I lived in Montreal for most of my childhood. I still remember the 1967 Montreal Expo like it was yesterday. I had never seen so many people come together for one event, it was like everyone in the whole province had come to celebrate the world in one place. The only way I can describe it was that it was a really, really big deal.

Everyone in my family got a passport for the Expo. The passport acted as an entry pass, and was good for as many visits as you could fit into the six months in which it ran. My whole family all bought passports. Since we didn’t really travel much, and one didn’t need a passport to travel into the United States at that time, these were the first passports any of us ever had.

We had a wonderful time filling in all the stamps on the pages. Counting them now, I managed 53 stamps. Some of them have dates that range between April 29 – September 17, almost the entire range of the Expo. I probably visited the grounds about 30 - 40 different times.

The Expo was an amazing learning experience for me. In those days, people didn’t have as clear a grasp on other parts of the world like they do now, the world wasn’t as global as it is today. At the time, I really knew nothing of these places whose pavilions I visited such as Algeria, Kenya, Yugoslavia, the list goes on.

I love to look at the passport from time to time and remember everything I saw, learned and experienced at the Expo. My children loved to look through it when they were kids as well. I don’t keep a whole lot of sentimental items, but this one has made it through the cut of seven different moves.

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