Ask any Montrealer to name a significant event in the history of their city and the chances are high that they will answer: Expo 67.
The World’s Fair not only deeply marked the imagination of Montreal, it left an indelible mark on the history of Quebec: openness to the world, to immigration and to other cultures, modernization of our infrastructures, etc. There is a “before” and an “after” Expo 67. We should therefore preserve and cherish all that relates to it.
However, this is not exactly what is happening, as illustrated by the most recent health check of Le Galopant, the emblematic La Ronde carousel.
This is the third time that a La Ronde carousel has made the headlines for the wrong reasons. La Pitoune, which stopped hurtling its waterfall in 2017, was dismantled the following year. In 2022, the Minirail made its last lap. La Ronde, who said at the time that he was thinking of a way to pay tribute to him, had not informed the City of Montreal of his decision.
PHOTO LUCIE LAVIGNE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Le Gallopant in 2008
As for the carousel, immortalized in the credits of the soap opera What a family !, it was restored in the early 2000s at a cost of $1 million. But the intervention was not sufficient to ensure the longevity of this superb ride made in Belgium in 1885. It has not been running since 2019.
Discussions about his future are ongoing. The Société du parc Jean-Drapeau (SPJD) said it was ready to support Six Flags in implementing a conservation plan.
It absolutely must. We cannot leave the care of preserving our heritage in the sole hands of a foreign company.
We also have to wonder if we shouldn’t take the carousel out of La Ronde altogether and install it elsewhere in the city so that everyone can admire it.
Admittedly, it would be magnificent near City Hall, in Old Montreal…
Certainly, it must be protected. It’s still incredible that the City of Montreal never required Six Flags to have a proper maintenance and conservation plan. Some unfortunate decisions could have been avoided.
More broadly, how to explain that there is no place where objects, visual archives, and memories of the Expo 67 experience are collected? A place that would be accessible to the public at all times?
There are a few Facebook groups held at arm’s length by Expo 67 heritage enthusiasts, but no structure or institution to assume this essential duty of memory.
There have indeed been a few occasional exhibitions – including several in 2017 during the 50e anniversary of the Expo – but there is no permanent place commemorating this key moment in our history.
Since the closure of Terre des Hommes in 1984, the old Expo pavilions have experienced different fates: some have been dismantled and rebuilt elsewhere on the planet, while the former United States pavilion – the spectacular sphere imagined by Richard Buckminster Fuller – has found a true calling with the Biosphere. We got used to the idea of a casino occupying the old pavilions of France and Quebec and we went to a few weddings in the old pavilions of Jamaica and Canada.
But you can very well tread the soil of the islands of Notre-Dame and Sainte-Hélène without knowing that they have welcomed more than 50 million people in the space of six months. It’s unfortunate.
That said, it is not too late to act.
The SPJD informed us on Friday that it has set up committees that will reflect on the future of targeted buildings as well as the development of places of commemoration.
We invite them to draw inspiration from certain European initiatives. In Margate, for example, a small seaside resort in Kent that is home to one of England’s oldest amusement parks, the Dreamland Heritage Fund has been set up. This fund ensures the protection of the heritage of the Dreamland amusement park, which dates back to the end of the 1870s.
With the money collected, we ensure not only to preserve and maintain the heritage rides, but we also keep the memory and history of the place alive.
The recent setbacks of the La Ronde carousel remind us that we can do much better to protect what remains of Expo 67.
We correct the shot for the 60e anniversary ?