World's Fairs

Archive Report

Hail and Farewell

Canada's Expo '86, Latest in a Long Line

It is the year 1940, in E. L. Doctorow's recent novel, and nine-year-old Edgar comes at last to the New York World's Fair and the beckoning World of Tomorrow. He espies the fabled Try Ion and Perisphere, pure white spire and sphere, mystic symbol of the fair, and he trembles with joy. Soon he is inside the General Motors exhibit, the fair's most popular: “We ran and took seats, each of us in a chair with high sides and loudspeakers built into them, they faced the same direction and were on a track. The lights went down. Music played and the chairs lurched and began to move sideways. In front of us a whole world ...

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