EXPO 67
1967 was an incredible year for Canada and especially for Montreal. Canada celebrated its 100th birthday. The country was more united than ever and every town, village, city, hamlet and township celebrated this very special birthday in its own way. The Canada Centennial Commission was created to coordinate and sometimes fund projects focused on celebrating and commemorating Canada's 100 birthday. Dollard des Ormeaux created the huge Centennial Lake for the enjoyment of its citizens, Toronto first celebrated Carabana, a Rio de Janeiro type festivity by Canadians from the Caribbean which has grown to an enormous success over the years, Abbotsford's International Air Show was an official Centennial project and at one minute after midnight on January 1, 1967, the Centennial flame was first lit on Parliament Hill. The biggest event of all was Montreal's Expo 67.
 
Expo 67 gave Canada an unprecedented opportunity to show the rest of the world that this country had reached the level of international status, was no longer to be considered a backward country and had become of age. Expo 67 did all that, did it with and did it with flair. During its 6 months existence, over 50,000,000 visitors passed through the turnstiles. It was an internationally sanctioned World's Fair and literally people from all over the world came to visit. Prime Minister Pearson in his remarks at the opening of Expo 67 said "This is a proud day for Montreal, for Quebec and above all for Canada." Expo 67 had a great impact on our lives. It was a very busy time for us as many people, including people new to us referred to us by other friends, made good use of our hospitality. I counted over "200 beds of hospitality" during that period. Both Ben and Mike were frequent visitors to the Expo 67 site. The line-ups for all the pavillons were long but people didn't seem to mind as everyone chatted with everyone else. Ron and I went fairly often too. We went Guus, Ben, Mike or with some of our guests. Ben went almost every day not only as a visitor but also because he had a summer job at the site. He worked at the Dutch restaurant in the amusement park area called La Ronde. He started as a dishwasher and later as part of the night cleaning crew. This enabled him to earn enough to pay his tuition fee for Loyola for another year. Guus had always intended to spend more time at Expo 67 in September when he had more time and presumably the crowds would be less. It was not to be. He had to pay the price for the very busy summer and ended up in the Lakeshore General Hospital for 3 weeks with a heart attack. He was home for 3 months recuperating and luckily the board at Catholic Immigration Services decided to pay for his sick leave though not all members had that Christian spirit. All in all, Expo 67 was an incredible experience.