The 105-Year-Old Blogger

On April 29, 1967, my family took its first expedition to the newly opened Expo 67.   Soon after, my mom wrote an account of the day.   Here is that account.   I was five years old.   My grandparents weren’t there that day.   This photo was taken some other year (not sure which) when they came to visit.  My grandmother must have taken the picture.   Left to right: me, Mom, Mary, Grandpa, Murray (behind Grandpa), Kathleen, Dad     High excitement and a few howls at breakfast and dressing and leaving activities. But we got away bright and early for us--9:15. Drove over Victoria Bridge with dire warnings from Murray and Kathleen that you can't get to Expo from Victoria Bridge. They proved right—they and the map. We had to first get into Montreal and pretend we didn't come from the South Shore, and get ourselves onto the new express highway that rolls down beside Expo and under the Victoria Bridge. There, we kept getting waved ...

When my family went to the west coast in 1975, we spent a day at the Pacific National Exhibition.   There were rides, cows, and a demolition derby…all in the pouring rain. I was in heaven.   These big-city events are one way for urbanites to get a taste of the county fair: the exhibitions, the rides, and maybe a circus.   As a Canadian, I got to enjoy all of these on a national level.   But I had to wait. The Exhibition When my siblings and I were very small, my parents took the family on short expeditions after church every Sunday.   I clearly remember hanging out at the St. Lambert locks, watching ships rise and fall.   One Sunday we ended up on a hill beside the Saint Lawrence river, looking at a pair of islands.   They were crawling with machinery.   Even though I was only five, I must have been listening to my parents’ conversation, because I know, all these years later, that these were the Expo islands.   We had fun at Expo 67...