Expo Canada

This article’s language reflects attitudes of the time. – Ed

Between June 19-23 [1967] five programmes were made at Expo ’67 in Canada. The people responsible were Grahame Turner (producer). Jim Pople (director), Ken Stapleton (manager), Frank Keating (editor, OB’s), Maggi Ricketts and Ruth Tester (PA’s) and the commentator was Barry Westwood. Here FRANK KEATING writes about his personal impressions of the trip.

‘Your first trip to Canada?’

‘My first trip to Canada.’

The 40-year-old had joined me, I suppose, because she was the only woman and I was the most likely of our little First Class group of four. The other two were businessmen who read nothing but the ‘Times’ Business Section in their waistcoats and do-it-twice-a-week bigtimery; I read Terry Coleman and Stan Reynolds and SOMERSET FOILED ON WET WICKET (Spinners Turn Slowly But Surely) and looked a First Class tourist – the only way to look if you’re a born Economy Class.

The crux of the thing was that she had joined me: I thus felt superior and didn’t grin and Smalltalk as I would have had I joined her. So I stared out of the window and felt superior and aloof. And, of course, she kept trying.

‘You’re going to the Expo?’ she drawled.

‘I’m going to Expo.’

‘I sure hope you like it. They say it’s wonderful, wonderful.’

‘Yes, They do, don’t they.’

‘I hope you’ll like we Canadians’ – she had underlined the ‘we’ so I knew I was in for the full colonial-family-tree bit. And I was:

‘Y’know, I’m a real Canadian, my family name is van Rensburg (or something) and we came over with the League of Empire Loyalists (or something) in seventeen (something) and landed at Lake Eyrie (or somewhere) and marched up to Quebec and left settlements on the way at (Godknowswhere) and the only people in the land were the Red Indians who we taught and civilised and…’ and on and on it droned, like the dear old VC10 itself, unfaltering and unspluttering and most boring, and I half-listened and thought of Frankie’s prettiness and neuroses and Turner’s cheerful narcissism and Minchin’s dapper smartness and Pople’s colourful wallcharts and Maggi’s efficiency and Gloucestershire’s need for two class batsmen and the Commander’s wit and our windowless office and Suzanne’s 21st and how we’re going to get five hours Expo programmes out of five days shooting with a hired crew and we must be mad. And then she said ‘Where are you staying?’ and I told her and she said it was the best – and then she gave up and said she was going to sleep now and ‘Enjoy your stay in Canada. It was nice talking to you’ and she turned her back on me in her super pink suit and pale blue chiffon neckscarf and I felt discarded especially as she went to sleep so soon and she wasn’t really at all bad and that bit of skin on the nape of her neck between the bottom of her expensive Boston-type hairdo and the top of the pale-blue chiffon was dark and slightly greasy which told of some encounter between a Dutch Empire Loyalist and a little Red Indian one night between seventeen something and a generation or two ago before the van Rensburgs came good through real estate or contract-hire (or something). Why hadn’t I shown more interest in her and in fact she was really damned attractive and should I ask her to share my taxi to the hotel when we get in and should I ask her straight up to my room for a drink? And then I forgot her except for the inelegant, annoying breathing by my side and got out Barry Westwood’s Expo report and had another drink and thought that the best thing to do, especially as we couldn’t move the scanners on the site, must be to highlight just five national pavilions, but which five, and had another drink and I must ring Pip Wedge when I get in…

Pip Wedge was the first man I saw next morning. In the Expo Press Lounge – all black leather and red carpets, appropriately the last word in Press Loungery – Rediffusion’s one time Manager of Music, Light Entertainment and Quiz Shows was holding a breakfast conference to put Geoffrey Hughes to shame. Except nobody ever smiled. The same type girls were there with their long hair and clipboards, the same programme editors with their whiz-kid glasses and the same type frontmen with sloppy shoes and crumpled trousers but immaculate head-and-shoulders. Nobody smiled, nobody threw croissants and the weekly slog (‘O.K. chaps, this week, the Monaco Pavilion’) was getting them down. Pip, as executive producer of CBC’s weekly Expo programme was so evidently the Boss. Canada was doing Pip Wedge the power of good: vice versa too I shouldn’t be surprised. Soon he’s off to an even classier job in Toronto; his lovely Liz, once the ‘Take Your Pick’ hostess, thrives too, as, in other necks of these very large woods, does Harry Sloan, Jack Nixon-Browne, June Byrne and Allan Erlich.

And so to Expo proper.

One of the features of the Fair as far as broadcasters are concerned is the International Broadcasting Centre. Built and manned by the CBC, it is available to broadcasters from all over the world who wish to send people to report.

There are two main TV studios, one of 7,500 square feet and one of 2,500 square feet, both equipped for colour or black-and-white; there are two fully-equipped, three-camera colour mobile units, two black-and-white units and a one-camera colour VTR cruiser. There are also six radio studios. Cost? To bona fide broadcasters, not a cent. Below-line, that is. You bring in and pay for your own talent, sets, graphics: if you want a couple of chairs, a table, and a potted plant, these they can provide. Plus a full crew – including a director and script assistant if you don’t want to send your own. Facilities are on a first come first served basis, provided that, in the opinion of the International Broadcasting Centre people, what you want to do will in some way tell the world about Expo ’67.

All the Fun of the Fair doesn’t get within an Atlantic width of Montreal; Expo ’67 is a serious business. Very serious. Seventy nations are represented by various architectural extravagances -from America’s geosidic sky-bubble gimmick to Haiti’s snack bar, Russia’s glassy railway-terminus to Germany’s superb curvaceous tent.

Oil refinery after oil refinery, hydroelectric plant after hydro-electric plant … Progress … thrusting technological advance after thrusting technological advance – then throw in a couple of Old Masters or a few twee ‘This is how it all began’ back projections, and there, folks, is our great country; we’ve got more industry, more consumer goods, better welfare facilities than anyone, although everyone else is doing pretty good too and we’re pleased about that, and here we are at this lovely international jamboree to celebrate the North American Way of Life. And the funny thing is the Russians are celebrating just that better than anyone.

Yes. Everyone’s a Good Guy at Expo – except nobody laughs at anything but a business-lunch laugh.

But there are one or two Bad Guys, and they gloriously save the day.

The Cuban pavilion is wonderful. It is a confusingly laid out, naively designed structure showing two hand-held verité films at either end of a room (!) and then a slogan walkaround (guided by the two most gorgeous girls I’ve ever seen) of captions saying, as good as, ‘YANKS GO HOME – And by the way, once you’re there, GET STUFFED’. It’s a gorgeous honest sort of Latin ‘Yaroo, you rotters, we licked you hollow’. Great stuff.

The Red Indian pavilion, too, was super. Give the suited-settlers their due, they allowed the stand to remain – but it must still be hurting them. What the Red Indians say inside their corny, wigwam structure is ‘YOU TOOK OUR LAND FROM US’. ‘LET US HAVE OUR OWN SCHOOLS AND LANGUAGE.’ ‘WE CELEBRATED NATURE BY NOT WASTING ANY OF IT – BUT LOOK AT YOU…’ It was a peaceful but strongly-felt theme, laid out by a gentle, intelligent man who felt he was on the right side but that the battle was already lost. Meanwhile, back at the petrochemicala-go-go, there is Britain’s tattered 3D Union Jack on top of Sir Basil Spence’s ugly white concrete slabs: nightly it seems to go down in the St. Lawrence’s real red colonial sunset in as bizarre a piece of unintended symbolism as ever happened.

Inside, the British pavilion has been the most popular – and, fair’s fair (as you might say) they have tried to spotlight the idea that people, not hydro-electricity makes up a nation. It starts well with an exciting Sean Kenny effort at back-projecting our history through to the Middle Ages, then flops into the ‘Our Great Heritage’ but which is no more than large hanging captions of Drake and Newton and Shakespeare and Fred Hoyle (!) and John Osborne (!) Then comes the showpiece – a large central room which attempts to show us as we really are, but doesn’t (unless you’re possibly a commuter from Surrey who only takes the ‘Evening News’ and ‘Sunday Express’ and who did his bit in the ARP). It’s the sort of thing a COI director joined the COI for; it’s a sort of ’British Is Best – But Just Look at the Competition, old boy.’ It endeavours to show our fancies and our fads, how we’re Great because of the mixture of Gilbert and Sullivan, Eton and Wood Green Primary, Elgar and the Kinks, tea and whisky, Rachman and Peabody. Dimbleby saying ‘And now Her Majesty moves up the great steps…’ and Arlott saying ‘Thompson to Broadbent and Worcester now need 62 more runs with the new ball due after tea…’

It all depressed me, until Grahame Turner came out a couple of days later and he loved it all (and even made the Canadians smile) and I thought O.K.. it wasn’t too bad really and looked forward to some really hard work and Grahame gave me a precious palmful of ‘Brute’ [sic] (the best after-shave in the world’) and I met the 40-year-old again.

So Grahame had his after-shave and I got the girl in the end.

In Canada, Rediffusion Incorporated and its subsidiaries operate a community antenna TV service in several townships in Quebec and Ontario, and background music services throughout the Province of Quebec.