a photographic journery through expo '67
 
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  Welcome to the Expo '67, Dixon Slide Collection website!

Enjoy our collection of original photographs taken at the 1967 World Exhibition that took place in Montreal, Quebec on April 28th through October29th.



 
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‘Expo ‘67’ as it was named, presented a platform from which “nations could display their aspirations, characteristics and achievements”.   In clear parallel to the architectural direction of the time, Expo was conceived as a showcase of diversity and innovation.

The site chosen for Expo ’67 was an innovation in itself.  Twenty-three million tonnes of fill gathered from excavations for the city’s underground transit system were used to enlarge the existing island of Ste-Helene and create an entirely new island, Ile Notre Dame.  Isolated by water, the Expo site became a micro city, utilizing the actual city of Montreal as its backdrop.
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        I. Kalin, Expo ’67: Survey of Building Materials, Systems and Techniques, (Ottawa: The Queens Printer, 1969), v.

-- excepts from: The First Nations Garden Pavilion & The French Pavilion:
Substance over Spectacle
 
   
    ...ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER
   
Meredith F. Dixon Meredith F. Dixon Meredith F. Dixon, was born in Montréal in April, 1905 and died there in December, 1972. He worked his way through McGill (a year or two in, a year out) and graduated as a mechanical engineer with Applied Science '29. After working as a plant foreman in Montréal during the early years of the Depression (for $0.35/hr.) he spent the rest of his career with Imperial Oil Limited in sales and sales management in Montréal, Noranda, Toronto, Winnipeg, and again in Montréal from 1960 until his retirement in 1970.

He served as a lieutenant commander (and a combustion specialist) with the RCN during WW2 in Halifax and London, England, and in the Atlantic, ensuring that ships in convoy burned fuel oil as cleanly as possible (to be less detectable by German subs).

A cultured and well-read man (particularly in history), he had many friends, women
(whom he appreciated) and men both, the best of these in Montréal from both of
[Hugh] MacLennan’s deux solitudes, to whom he spoke either or both our "official"
languages.

Merry (as he was called by friends when younger and old friends always) was an
accomplished skier, boxer and football player, and a very good tennis player (beating
club pros). His bridge game was formidable.

Delighted when his native city was chosen to host Expo '67, and a methodical and
painstaking man (and a lifelong photographer), he carefully planned his many
visits there. His love of Montréal, history, and sunlight inform his photos of Expo.
These as a meticulously documented slide collection were given to McGill’s School of
Architecture at the behest of its Professor Pieter Sijpkes, and are here accessible at
the kind suggestion of the School’s Professor Annmarie Adams.

Meredith’s older son worked at Expo as a golf cart driver of the rich and celebrated.
When his dad accompanied him in the front passenger seat, Dixon fils was
continuously astonished at how well his father got on with Chicago department store
owners, Russian ballerinas, Caribbean envoys, and the chefs (and hostesses) of
various pavilions, to all whom Dixon père always introduced himself simply as un
vieux Montréalais.


--Courtesy of John Dixon