Canada’s weird-and-whimsical pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal had a simple goal. It was, incidentally, one of the goals the country was looking to achieve with the entire expo: to show the rest of the world that it mattered.

The pavilion’s design is better understood with a small history lesson. In 1960, Montreal formally announced its bid to host the Universal and International World Exposition of 1967, a designation awarded by the Bureau International des Expositions (or, the BIE). In short, it was looking to improve its reputation. At previous exhibitions (Brussels’ Expo 58 and, before that, the New York World’s Fair in 1939, among others) Canada’s identity was more or less defined by natural resources. With this new event, the country was looking to present itself in a different light.

Its main competition was Russia, and ultimately the BIE awarded the 1967 expo to Moscow. Two years later, though, Russia pulled out. The formal excuse was financial constraints, though there were rumours of other reasons (for example, that the government was hesitant to expose their socialist citizens to the luxe comforts of the rest of the world). Either way, with two years wasted, the BIE unanimously voted to award the exposition to Montreal – and, the general public consensus was that it would be a failure. Early players in the expo’s inception even fled after reports indicating that there was no way the project could be completed before 1969. So the Canadian pavilion, like many aspects of the expo, was up against it from the very start.

The other defining feature of Canada’s pavilion was Expo 67’s overarching theme of Man and His World. The goal of this theme was to divert attention away from individual countries’ achievements and funnel it (albeit, not all of it) into a general celebration of man. For Canada, a country virtually synonymous with this shy, all-are-welcome approach, it provided a comfortable foundation upon which they were able to think outside the box and grow their unique identity. In fact, Mordecai Richler noted, “with other, larger powers usurping Canada’s traditional self-effacing stance, it has fallen on the host nation to play it straight.”

Even the pavilion’s architects were awarded the commission based on a passion to redefine Canada’s identity. Architects Rod Robbie, Colin Vaughan and Dick Williams of Ashworth, Robbie, Vaughan and Williams Architects and Planners were one of 60-plus firms to submit proposals to the commission. When Robbie, a British-born Torontonian – and later the award-winning designer of the Sky Dome – stood up in front of the committee, his passionate presentation ended in tears. In The Best Place to Be by John Lownsbrough, Robbie summarized his pitch: “‘You’ve done more than grow half the wheat in the world! What about the scientists? What about the artists?’ I got so worked up, I burst into tears. ‘This pavilion,’ I said, ‘has got to put Canada ahead of the US and the Russians.’” After telling Robbie to pull himself together, the committee awarded them the job.

Like the country itself, Canada’s pavilion was huge. Robbie and his team had to fight the expo’s chief architect, Edouard Fiset, on this point: Fiset wanted to give them one acre, and the architects wanted 11. The go-big mentality eventually won out, and the resulting 30,285 square metre, $21-million campus, with its nine buildings, two restaurants and a snack bar, and 125 exhibits, was a bit of a dare to time-strapped show goers. Toronto Daily Star reporter Robertson Cochrane, for example, noted “it’s difficult to see how a visitor could take even a cursory look at our big pavilion in less than three hours.”

The “big green ashtray in the sky”

The showpiece was the Katimavik, an inverted pyramid that visitors could climb to the top of and then down into explore the open-air exhibits within. “It takes its name from the Eskimo word for ‘gathering place,’” says the Expo 67 official guide. “A significant reminder of Canada’s welcoming role as host to millions of people from every part of the world.” Modern verbiage would refer to it as an Inuktitut word used by the Inuit community, but the definition remains the same.

Supported by four massive columns, the 1,000-ton creation sat on a hollow steel frame. Surrounding it – and perhaps accentuating the overturned form – was a series of 14 smaller pyramids (right side up) in vinyl, housing various exhibits and a rotating system that swept 1,000 visitors through five theatres every half hour (the series of films were about the growth of the country). Katimavik’s shape was reported to have come about when the architects were developing a model of the pavilion and a pyramid-shaped ashtray was placed on it by the cleaning lady (some say it was a paper weight placed by the architects to hold pieces together while glue dried), a story which led at least one reporter to refer to the building as “the big green ashtray in the sky.”

Visitors climbed stairs to enjoy two views from the top edge of the pyramid: looking out, they could admire a gorgeous view of the expo from 33 metres in the air. Looking inward, visitors could explore the four sloping walls, adorned with oversized sculptures moving to “eerie electronic music”. The sculptures related to the overall theme of Man and his World. There was, among others, a sun dial, an hour glass, a compass, and a Haida mask from the aboriginal community in British Columbia: what The Canadian Magazine called “great shadowy symbols that Canada has installed to represent things universal to all men, combine to create an air of mystery and spiritual grandeur.”

Perhaps it’s the simplicity of the structure that led the Katimavik to be one of the icons of the expo on the whole (though most would likely bow to the sheer magnitude of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome for the USA pavilion). It’s certainly a prime example of the power of architecture to tell a message – in this case, that Canada wasn’t trying to distance itself from its identity as a purveyor of natural resources, but it was encouraging visitors to look deeper.

In its initial preview of the expo, the New York Times describes Canada’s pavilion this way: “Underlying all the attractions at the Canadian pavilion is a theme that is symbolically expressed by the buildings themselves. The cluster of pyramids suggests the crystalline structure of Canada’s rich natural resources, while the enormous inverted pyramid at the heart of the pavilion suggests the ingenuity shown in making creative use of them.” The Toronto Daily Star, meanwhile, simply called it “impressively different.”

The “magazine cover tree”

Alongside Katimavik, the second major feature of Canada’s pavilion was, on paper, deceptively simple: an artificial maple tree. The six-storey structure was covered in nylon “leaves” – over 1,400 – silkscreened with life-sized photos of everyday Canadians. A spiral staircase twisted through the foliage like an open-air trunk, while the roots offered an aptly-located exhibit on the “sociological originals of Canada’s cultural mosaic.” Mordecai Richler called it, “briefly, a multi-colored, illuminated magazine cover tree,” but to the less cynical, the Tree of the People was a ethereal, glowing homage to the multi-cultural people of Canada – especially after dusk when it was lit from within.

Other notable elements amid the sprawling pavilion included a 500-seat theatre and 1,200 amphitheatres, a non-denominational meditation space and aboriginal art commissioned from various communities.

“Gentle mounds, pine trees and hedges”

An ultra-modern play area by landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander made the case for modern playgrounds. “Whatever we do, let us build playgrounds that will help the young to develop a feeling of self-fulfillment in the age of leisure and make recreation a creative experience,” wrote Oberlander in her original project description. “[The playground] should provide some new ideas for crowded urban communities. Everywhere in cities there are areas that could be made into ‘vest-pocket parks,’ with mounds, ravines, treehouses, streams for wading and places for building.”

Oberlander’s prototype of such a vest-pocket park, with ample elements to run, climb and crawl through, textures to touch and colours to enjoy. “Gentle mounds, pine trees and hedges” offered children an alternative to the asphalt of the rest of the city while a wall and musical screens by Gordon Smith provided quieter moments of calm creativity. The playground itself was located outside a children’s creative centre that explored cutting-edge education practices, with one-way screens for education and recreation researchers to watch the children interact with professionally trained specialists. For some footage of the playground and centre – and shots of the rest of the pavilion, for that matter – check out the National Film Board of Canada’s footage here.

There were also a few quirkier one-offs to play up the kitsch element of Canada’s past: part of the trunk of a B.C. Douglas Fir that was reportedly seeding when Jacques Cartier arrived (“now it would be big enough to drive a car through,” reported the Montreal Star), and Uki, a nine-metre-long serpent with two heads – the creation of sculptor Gerald Gladstone and named after the Huron-Iroquoian term for monster (there are some great photos of Uki here). Every half hour, the creature breathed fire and smoke, and let out “weird sounds” in one of the pavilion’s two man-made ponds (the other pond depicted a pint-sized model freighter besieged by Styrofoam “ice” and then saved by a model ice breaker).

In short, the consensus was that the Canadian pavilion met its goal. Cochrane’s Toronto Daily Star dispatch may have put it best: “Big and sprawling, cluttered in spots and wide and airy in others; a bit confusing here and childishly blunt and simple there; lusty and frivolous in some ways, heavy and prosaic in others,” he wrote. “In typically Canadian fashion, it looks as though it just grew that way – quickly, haphazardly, happily.”

(All images via Library and Archives Canada)

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Sources:

(1967, April). Man and his world at Expo 67 Montreal Canada (special section). New York Times.



(1967, February 11). Special issue Expo ’67. Star Weekly.



(1967, June 17). The wondrous fair. The Canadian Magazine.



Cochrane, Robertson (1967, April 22). It’s big, it’s lusty, it’s Canada. Toronto Daily Star.



Cropas, Youki. (2016). (Re)Imagining Children’s Landscapes: The Social Architecture of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander. School of Architecture McGill University.

Lownsbrough, John. (2012). The Best Place to Be: Expo 67 and its time. Penguin Group.

Oberlander, Cornelia Hahn. Space for Creative Play.

Richler, Mordecai. (1968). Hunting tigers under glass: essays and reports. McClelland & Stewart.

Richler, Mordecai. (1974). Notes on an endangered species and others. Knopf.

Roberts, Grant. (1967, April 28). The big five plays it big. The Montreal Star.