Open To The Public
Expo 67 officially opened to the public on the morning of Friday, April 28, 1967. By 8:30 a.m., an overflowing crowd was packed into the main gate area of Place d'Accueil in anticipation of the opening. As an atomic clock co-ordinated the final countdown, the crowd listened to the bilingual countdown announcements over the fair's public address system. With 30 seconds to go, the crowd started participating, mostly in English, and drowned out the public address system in the final ten seconds. At precisely 9:30 a.m. EST, four and half years of lobbying and construction were over, Expo 67 opened its doors to the world.
The other entry point into the fair was at the Montreal metro station on Île Sainte-Hélène. By 8:45 a.m., the metro station was overflowing with visitors and they had to be let onto the fair grounds as a public safety precaution . So, unofficially Expo 67 opened at 8:45 a.m. due to the much better than anticipated crowds.
An estimated crowd of between 310,000 to 335,000 visitors showed up for opening day, as opposed to only 200,000 people the authorities expected. The first person through the Expo main gates at Place d'Accueil was Al Carter, a 41 year old jazz drummer from Chicago, who as Pierre Berton describes:
| “ | already had a reputation as "the first man at world's fairs." Four years earlier he had written to Jean Drapeau about Expo, but failed to get an answer. That didn't dismay him. He began to bombard expo officials with requests for the No. 1 ticket to the fair. "If Expo ever issues a certificate for the most persistent and tenacious visitor to the fair," Expo's admissions sales manager, J.P. Lussier, wrote to him, "the name of Al Carter would be inscribed in gold." | ” |
Carter was able to buy ticket 00001 for a seven-day Expo passport and get the assistant area manager of the main gate, Richard J. Kaufman to write "This gentleman was waiting at Place d'Accueil this morning at 9:30 for the general public opening. To our knowledge this man is the first in line at Expo." The night before the opening, he joined the preliminary queue with a group of 25 other people and they allowed him to proceed to the front of the line. Carter received a gold watch from Expo 67's director of operations Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien, who was very impressed with his achievement.
On opening day, there was considerable comment regarding the UK Pavilion hostesses' uniforms. The dresses had been designed to the then new minidress style, which had been introduced in the previous year by Mary Quant. By the middle of the summer, nearly every other pavilion had raised the hem of the uniforms of their hostesses. Canadian women were quick to take to the liberated style of the mini skirt.
Read more about this topic: Expo 67 (opening Week)
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