The Little People of Expo 67

Expo 67: Album Souvenir/Souvenir Book
Montreal: Benjamin News, [1966?]

Expo 67 opened forty-five years ago today. The most successful World Exhibition, it once held the record for single day-attendance: 569,500. I was one of those people. My father spent 28 April 1967, and nearly every day of the following six months at work in the International Broadcasting Centre.

A sort of unofficial CBC pavilion, the IBC housed the largest studio the corporation has ever built. Visitors might watch a news broadcast, an opera or take in the fun offered by some technical guys working behind angled plate-glass windows.

Not much to look at, architecturally the Centre was overshadowed by pretty much every other pavilion of the Exposition. My favourite, the Canadian pavilion, graces the cover of this album souvenir.

A curious booklet, it appears to have been put together well in advance of the fair itself. It presents no images of the actual site, rather a selection of models and sketches that were done in advance of the Exposition.

All are remarkably faithful to the final product. No false advertising here.

The exception comes with the German pavilion.

The roof that went up – in a mere six weeks, it was boasted – was less transparent, less elegant, and looked much like a sturdy foundation garment.

The award for most accomplished model goes to that created for the French pavilion.

 Those working on the Venezuelan pavilion had a much easier time of it.

And, finally, we have the pavilion for Monaco, which looked for all the world like an elementary school art project.

"A reminder that art class is tomorrow. Don't forget to bring in those toilet paper rolls you've been saving at home."

Kindergarten brought an abrupt end to my Expo experience. Over the years that followed, from vantage points at the old port and Île Sainte-Hélène, I watched with some sadness as its pavilions were dismantled. It wasn't until 1980 that I returned, passing the rusted carcasses of the Expo Express to take in the B-52s at the Place des Nations.

I vowed to never go back. And I haven't

Object and Access: A 32-page, staple-bound booklet in full-colour. It would seem that at a later date the album souvenir was reissued with photographs of the completed pavilions replacing the models. Once steady thrift shop stock, copies still show up from time to time. The impatient might try the internet, but should be forewarned that most vendors are flogging the more common later edition. Six copies are listed for sale online, five of which can be had for US$15 or less. The sixth, offered by a Montreal bookseller at C$75, should be ignored.

The Curious and Unknown Leo Orenstein

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

Leo Orenstein is worthy of much overdue attention for his work as one of this country's early television directors and producers. I hope that a bookish fellow like myself will be forgiven for focussing on his even earlier work as an illustrator.

Curious Relations of Mankind is one of two recently discovered cover designs that come to me courtesy of the late Mr Orenstein's family. Curious, indeed. It would appear that the book it was meant to grace was never published. WorldCat gives us no hits, Abebooks is silent... and yet the identity  of the intended publisher is clear. Those familiar with the eariest days of Canadian paperbacks will recognize the three-sided Fireside Publicatons style in the price.

But what was Curious Relations of Mankind? And who was Doctor J.G. Wood? I step out on a limb in suggesting that the good doctor was Reverend J.G. Wood. I'll even be so bold as to suggest that Curious Relations of Mankind was the clergyman's The Civilized Races of Men retitled and bowdlerized.

It would not have been the only time Fireside gave an fresh title to an old book. Here's their edition of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon:

Now, to be fair, From the Earth to the Moon is naught but a translation of the true title: De la Terre à la Lune. Yes, it's the most common, but we've also seen the novel published as A Trip to the Moon in Ninety-seven Hours, A Voyage to the Moon, The Moon Voyage, Balbicane and Co.,  and The Baltimore Gun Club. The problem I have with Rocket Flight to the Moon is that the novel features no rockets – the adventurers are sent to the moon in a projectile shot from a massive cannon.

Of the two discovered Orensteins, I prefer this mock-up for The Queers of New York (Pocket Books, 1972), his lone novel.

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

One is left to assume that Those Queers of New York was a working title, just as the cover itself was something that was not quite ready. The Queers of New York is a better title, I think.

A favourite Canadian cover of that lost decade, my only complaint is that Leo Orenstein's name is so very small.

Related posts:

A Leo Orenstein Tripych

Figuring Out the Queers of New York

The Talented Mr. Orenstein

Ce Soir: Montreal Noir

Tonight at the Blue Metropolis festival I'll have the honour of hosting 'Montreal Noir', a panel discussion focussing on the city's suppressed, ignored and forgotten novels of the mid-20th century.

Joining me on stage will be Trevor Ferguson, Jim Napier and Will Straw. Actor Marcel Jeannin will be reading excerpts from work by David Montrose, Martin Brett and the great Brian Moore:

Montreal Noir: The City's Forgotten Pulp Past

OPUS Montreal Hotel, Salon St-Laurent

10 Sherbrooke Street West

Saturday, 21 April, 8:30 pm 

Shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize

The Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2011 Gabrielle Roy Prize (English Section), which each year honours the best work of Canadian literary criticism published in English. This year’s shortlisted finalists (in alphabetical order) are Brian Busby for A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer (McGill-Queen’s UP); Alan Filewod for Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada (Between the Lines Press); Sophie McCall for First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative Authorship (UBC Press); and Herb Wyile for Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature (Wilfrid Laurier UP).

The shortlist was chosen by a jury composed of David Creelman (UNB, Saint John), Carrie Dawson (Dalhousie University), and Cynthia Sugars (University of Ottawa).

The winner will be announced publicly on May 26th, 2012, at the Gabrielle Roy Prize reception at the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures annual conference, which this year will take place in Waterloo, Ontario. The prize reception will be held from 6:00-7:30 p.m. on May 26th in the Graduate Lounge on the first floor of the Student Services Building at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The jury was unanimous in selecting A Gentleman of Pleasure for particular recognition. One member described the book as “a beautifully written and very well researched account of Glassco’s life and, equally interesting, of his interactions with so many other Canadian writers, artists, and intellectuals. Never before has the mid-twentieth-century Canadian literary and cultural scene appeared so … scandalous!” Another wrote: “Balanced, incisive, and precise, Busby has produced a carefully researched and elegantly written biography. Focusing on a minor writer with a persistent talent, the book is more than a chronicle of the main events of Glassco’s life. A Gentleman of Pleasure captures the tone of the different eras through which Glassco moved and is imprinted with the anxieties and difficulties of an uncentered writer emerging in the midst of the emptiness of the modernist era. The writing is professional, clear, and engaging, and the research is meticulously documented.”

Cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure