As we have previously commented, the idea of history and what happened in the past is often an interesting concept for someone of a relatively young age.
For many people, thinking about the fact that Expo’86 started 30 years ago is a combination of “how can it be 30 years already?” and “it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.” For a younger person, the comment might be that it was “way before I was even born.”
No matter what our perspective is on this event – local, regional, or provincial – it was at the start of May 1986 that the exposition began its popular run, the anticipation of which had been building for a long, exciting time. There will undoubtedly be a great deal said about Expo’86 over the next six months as the fair and its local influence is discussed, debated and remembered.
The history of world fairs, exhibitions or expositions is extensive, truly eye-opening, extremely informative and highly entertaining. So many things in our history can be linked to a world fair. Inventions, products, processes and the like were often initially presented at a themed world fair because of the publicity and audience that was involved. Publications and descriptions from early fairs are wonderful to read.
The fair that is usually referred to as the first was held in 1851 in London, England. This was The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations and gave us the famous structure, The Crystal Palace. In New Westminster of 1862 there was great excitement as a series of local items and display pieces were gathered for display at another “international exhibition” in London that year.
Over the ensuing decades, local newspapers readers would see articles and promotions advertising other upcoming expositions. Fairs like Philadelphia (1876), Chicago (1893), Buffalo (1901) and St. Louis (1904) drew a lot of attention with special ads pushing methods of travel using rail lines to visit the events. The 1889 fair in Paris highlighted the awe-inspiring, newly constructed, Eiffel Tower in its stories.
On the West Coast there were exhibitions that would have had feature stories and promotions in local papers including Portland (1905), which was marking the Lewis and Clark Centennial, Seattle (1909) for the Alaska, Yukon and Pacific International Exposition, and San Francisco and San Diego in consecutive years 1915, 1916 for Panama Pacific and Panama California.
Of course there were many others to follow and others to fill out an extensive list such as New York (1939) with its prognostications, Seattle (1962), and Montreal (1967), and, well, this list does go on.
Thirty years ago Expo’86 put our area on the worldwide map of World Fairs, and the community got fully involved in the same spirit as the local citizens of 1862 had gathered at a hall downtown to see the things travelling around the world to an exposition in England.
