I was 12 years old in 1967, and that summer I had a special experience I will never forget. A group of teenage students were to take the train all the way from Edmonton to Montreal to see Expo!
Since my Dad had some sort of connections, he was able to get me in on the trip even though I didn’t quite meet the age requirement — especially since I would be with my sister and my cousin, both aged 14. Of course there were supervisors, but not very many as I recall.
The three of us had a blast first of all on the train trip and then while in Montreal.
We stayed at a kind of dormitory — I don’t recall exactly where — and each day we were given breakfast and then boarded the bus for Man and his World.
At the Expo site we were discharged with our bag lunch and Expo “passport” in hand and not picked up until late afternoon.
While on the grounds we were on our own — not directly supervised by anyone! (Can you imagine that now?) Of course, the three of us stuck together and couldn’t wait to partake each day in all that Expo had to offer, not the least of which was to visit all the pavilions we could, as at each one our passport was stamped.
Of course, being adolescents on our own, we weren’t averse to new experiences we probably should have avoided. Somehow one day we smuggled out a few Russian cigarettes from the USSR Pavilion, found a secluded spot and some matches and lit these horrid things up. Ugh! We only got a few puffs in before we tossed them, but not before my cousin Patsy got to feeling quite ill!
Suffice to say we spent the next few hours in the nurse’s tent, having definitively learned our lesson.
I still have my Expo passport, with 65 stamps in it! And I sometimes wonder if I was possibly the youngest kid to visit Expo for a week with no adult supervision. — Betty Chalmers Wurtz