Ask a Historian

USSR pavilion foreground, USA dome at rear

Do you get this from time to time, even in the era on online search?  "You are a historian, do you know....?"

My latest assignment of this type: "IF during Expo 67 in Montreal, a cosmonaut walked out of the Soviet pavilion and an astronaut walked out of the American pavilion and they met and shook hands on the bridge between the islands the two pavilions stood on, what were their names?"

It's not a joke or a riddle, it's a serious question. After a fair amount of searching around, I'm thinking the correct answer is, "That never happened." But the questioner has such a detailed memory of the event, I'm not yet ready to conclude absence of evidence here is the same as a proven no.

Anyone with a Expo '67 library or other knowledge, I'd welcome your expertise. (Email at right)

I was told I'm the Expo expert because I once wrote a piece about it. Well, I'm really not, but the piece is here, and I still like it.

Update, August 10:  The network delivers: we have new information.  More soon.

Expo '67 officially opened 5 months ago today - in 1967, and will close in one month and one day on October 29, 1967. Today marked the 43rd millionth visitor and they'd been hoping for 35 million visitors. To keep this in perspective, Canada's population was 20,500,000 in 1967.

Things got a bit slowed down by the Montreal Transit strike that started this week. Listen for the - Mao poetry to Expo passports on CBC radio's daily report on Expo "Expodition".

Here listen to Expo's Gates Open to the World (clip 5) for interviews with people who'd waited in line all night to get into Expo with a countdown to 9:30 am when the gates opened to the public on April 28, 1967.

The Western Pavilion, (for Manitoba, Saskatchewan - where I live now, Alberta and British Columbia)which sounds like it was a welcome relief from the 'jungle of steel'  was written up the very first day of Expo in the Ottawa Journal. What I especially remember of the Western Pavilion was the day they had flapjacks on tap.
     Nary a flapjack since.