Expo 67

As I've mentioned before, 1967 was Canada's centennial year and one of the major events was the World Exposition in Montreal. The TV and radio ads had this catchy little jingle that I still can't get out of my head - Ex-po Six-ty Se-ven Mon-tre allll :-)
St. Paul's put together a week long trip to the event and mom convinced the school to pay my way - she just kicked in some extra to get me a sleeping berth on the train and provided me with some spending cash... I think the St. Paul's bursar had given up arguing with mom - whenever she showed up he'd just open the school's wallet and give her whatever she asked for... It was easier that way :-)

BTW - I took a lot of pictures during that Expo trip - but not a single one has any of my classmates in it so I didn't bother to scan them... That's so typical of me - I almost never photograph people... It's not intentional - it just happens... But I digress...

The train trip to Montreal was magnificent - you don't realize just how sparsely populated Canada is until you travel by train. We spent hours winding through the forests and lakes in southern Ontario - and briefly along the north shore of Lake Superior - and through towns that time seemed to have forgotten...

OK - there was one "potty humor" incident (literally) along the way:
There were no sewage holding tanks on the train - the toilets had little trap doors that opened right above the wheels... And, for obvious reasons, there were signs advising travelers not to use the facilities when the train was in the station...
So - the train made a brief stop somewhere in Ontario. A group of us disembarked and were talking to the porter when an "object" landed on top of the wheel right next to him... The porter didn't skip a beat - he just glanced over his shoulder and slowly moved to the other side of the steps... I can't really describe how hard we were laughing - it's not that often that you're talking to someone and a turd magically appears next to them... To quote Larry the Cable Guy: "That there's funny - I don't care who you are!"

So - we arrived in Montreal - and the Expo was incredible. Bell Telephone had video phones - you could talk to people at Disneyland. There was a large room with a 360 degree movie screen - they had filmed a hockey game from the middle of the rink with a special camera - you could watch the players skate past you - then they showed an airplane segment and everyone in the room leaned whenever the plane banked...

I could go on and on - there were amazing things to see and do everywhere you went at Expo... But that's not what made the trip so memorable...

We were housed in a new apartment building - they had filled all of the rooms with cots to provide as much temporary housing as possible for Expo - I think there were about 50 of us from St. Paul's occupying 2 apartments. Definitely "close quarters"...
And there were a number of other groups staying in same building. The most notable was the cheerleading squad for the Hamilton Wildcats... Now - these were not the "professional dancers" you see on the sidelines at professional sporting events nowadays... They appeared to be in their late teens - more like high school or junior college cheerleaders...

Our official "chaperones" were a couple of the lay teachers at St. Paul's. They never had any intention of spending time with us... They brought their girlfriends along and as soon as we were settled in they took off... We didn't see them again until after the Montreal police tracked them down... Which leads me to the memorable part of the Expo trip:

The "beer drinking age" in Quebec was 18 at the time and as luck would have it there were a number of 18 year olds in our group. As soon as the chaperones left they headed to the store and the next thing you know our apartments were "party central". And it stayed that way for the entire week... In addition to the endless supply of beer at the apartments there were also beer gardens at the Expo that weren't very rigorous about checking IDs... So yeah - a drunk time was had by all :-)
BTW - We devised a system whereby you'd keep your beer bottle caps in your right pocket so when someone passed out we could do a quick count and know if we needed to call an ambulance or just let them sleep it off... Anything over 30 was considered hazardous :-)

Within a day of our arrival the Montreal police had decided to station a motor officer outside of our building.
I'm not going to mention everything that happened... We're talking about 50 perpetually drunk unsupervised teenage boys here - use your imagination... But there were some noteworthy highlights:

One of the guys bought some wooden shoes at the Holland pavilion and was running all over the building showing everyone how cool they were by kicking holes in the walls... We were trying to get him under control but he was too big and too drunk to deal with... When he finally passed out we counted 26 bottle caps in his pocket - so we just let him sleep it off :-) BTW - He died in a car accident the following summer - I was really bummed about that - he was quite the character...

Another guy bought a bullwhip at the Mexican pavilion and was chasing cheerleaders up and down the stairs with it... Yeah - if I had bothered to write down a list of things to do with cheerleaders at that age I don't think chasing them with a bullwhip would have been at the top... I don't think that would even be on the list. :-)

OK - this was funny - one evening a couple of drunk guys got into a shoulder-punching contest. One of the contestants quit because his shoulder was bleeding. That's when he finally realized his opponent was wearing a class ring :-) ("Heyyyy!! ... Noooo fairrrr!!!") OK - maybe you had to be there...

I think the final straw was when the police learned that we had disposed of close to a thousand empty beer bottles by throwing them onto the roof of the church next door... They sent a detective by and we were informed that we needed to leave first thing in the morning. We probably would have been asked to leave sooner but a good portion of the crew was passed out...

So in the morning we took the train to Ottawa. We had been scheduled to leave Montreal later that afternoon anyway so we spent most of the day in Ottawa waiting for the "right" train so we could arrive in Winnipeg on time and pretend like nothing had happened. And of course we all agreed never to talk of it... Our chaperones might have lost their teaching jobs if word had gotten out and nobody wanted that to happen...

Ottawa was cool - we watched the guys in the red uniforms and the tall fuzzy black hats stand motionless outside the gates to the parliament building for a while... But that got kind of boring ("Look - he still hasn't moved!")... Now - It's a bit embarrassing to admit where I spent most of the day - but I will anyway:
There was a Scottish sword dancing competition going on in one of the downtown buildings and I spent hours standing by the stage watching teenage girls hop around in kilts... Yeah - given all the historical and cultural events going on in Ottawa at the height of the centennial that was kind of a Beavis and Butthead way to spend the afternoon... But hey - I was 13 at the time - and I wasn't the only one. And most of the dancers were actually quite good :-)

The only thing I remember from the rest of the trip is arriving in Winnipeg... I was beyond exhausted...
And everyone kept the secret - no rumors in the halls - not a hint... I never heard it spoken of again... What happened in Montreal stayed in Montreal :-)

A brief epilogue:
Sometime during the 1990s I got a St. Paul's alumni newsletter containing an open apology from the senior class for "besmirching" the school's reputation... Apparently they had conducted a scavenger hunt that caused such widespread disruption and mayhem that it made the front page of the Winnipeg paper... Yeah - they had no way of knowing that their apology would be reaching former students who got kicked out of Montreal in the summer of 67...

After all those years St. Paul's hadn't changed a bit... :-)