Vancouver Counts on Expo ’86 to Build Base for Stronger Economy

Things have not gone British Columbia’s way in recent years. But there is hope--a giant party.

Faced with an unemployment rate consistently above 10%, nonexistent industrial growth and a disappearing economic base, the powers that be are counting on a world’s fair called Expo ’86 to point the way back to prosperity.

Expo ’86 is scheduled to open May 2 and go on for 5 1/2 months. Vancouver expects it to attract millions of people to a 250-acre site crowded with displays, rides, concerts and fast-food outlets. Transportation and communication will be the theme.

Provincial Premier Bill Bennett, the key promoter for the fair, said it is part of an economic strategy designed to catch the attention of the world.

Declining Demand

In an interview, Bennett lamented British Columbia’s traditional dependency on exporting such natural resources as lumber and coal for which there has been declining demand. Expo ‘86, he said, will promote tourism and “create a service industry as the fastest way to create employment.”

The potential beyond Expo “is tremendous,” he said, and added, “I don’t know where we would be without Expo.”

His cheery hope is based on figures that indicate that the fair will be the most successful in recent times, the best since Montreal’s Expo ’67 and far outpacing expositions in Japan, New Orleans and Knoxville, Tenn.

Sales are moving briskly, with more than 9 million of the projected 13.5 million tickets already paid for and construction running far ahead of schedule. There will be pavilions from 32 countries, every Canadian province and territory, and three American states.

Entertainers will be on hand, from the Kirov ballet company to the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as Broadway stars and rock groups.

And, according to Jim Pattison, the millionaire trucking tycoon who is directing Expo on a volunteer basis, the project will not overrun its budgeted $300-million deficit.

All this is aimed at turning British Columbia into a tourist mecca and service-industry center to replace lumber and mining as the province’s economic engine.

“It will be the magical event of the year,” Vancouver Mayor Mike Harcourt, once a bitter critic, said recently. “It’s going to build the realization that this is one of the best places around, a choice destination for tourists, conventions . . . a catalyst for growth and job creation.” Maybe so, but there are skeptics who have raised questions not only about the long-term economic benefits, but also about forecasts that the fair will restore civic pride and transform Vancouver into a more livable city.

Dave Barrett, a former premier whose moderately socialist New Democratic Party was defeated by Bennett and his Social Credit Party, at least in part over the Expo issue, said the fair “is a kind of psychological circus to give people a lot of hope . . . the sort of thing that goes back to Nero.”

Looking for Miracle

Talking with a reporter, Barrett likened the area’s economic malaise to a deadly illness, and added: “If you’re terminally ill with economic cancer you go for the apricot pit. People are looking for a miracle . . . but there is no thoughtful planning for economic development after Expo. What is missing is the will to form rational economic and political thought. You don’t build a solid economy on a party.”

Nonsense, Bennett said. He described Expo as part of an economic strategy, accompanied by tax breaks and other incentives aimed not only at building tourism but attracting businesses and financial institutions that will see that British Columbia provides modern technology and a good investment climate.

Bennett has invited 32,000 international businessmen and firms to come to Expo and tour Vancouver and the rest of the province.

Harcourt, who once wrote to the international organization that authorizes world’s fairs to protest putting Expo ’86 in Vancouver, but then came around to supporting Bennett’s view, also dismissed the gainsayers, particularly those who say past fairs did not provide any lasting benefits.

Harcourt takes credit for negotiating a broad range of improvements for his city--new bridges, widened streets, an elevated rapid transit system, a computerized traffic control system.

‘Acceptable Use’

“In addition,” he said, “we came up with an acceptable use for the site after Expo ends in October . . . and I don’t see the momentum slowing down. Vancouver will be the business, transportation and communication center on the West Coast.” Others are dubious. Some see Expo as a missed opportunity to really develop Vancouver into a truly beautiful and livable city.

Even Pattison, who is given credit for almost single-handedly making Expo a reality, does not see much long-range impact beyond accelerating tourism throughout the province. “I don’t think it’s going to make Vancouver a different place,” he said. “It’s not going to be like New York, Los Angeles or London, except in terms of the Pacific Rim. . . . But that was going to happen anyway,” because the city is already a gateway into Canada from Asia.

There is also a sense of letdown by city planners and social philosophers who had hoped that the fair would spark a revamping of the city, which had developed helter-skelter into something of an urban eyesore, its basic ugliness hidden by the surrounding natural beauty.

Edward Gibson, an art historian at Simon Frazier University, said in an interview that “a famous architect once came here, looked around and said, ‘What a view by God, what a mess by man.’ ”

Peter Oberlander, an urbanologist at the University of British Columbia, also sees Expo as “a lost opportunity.”

Instead of planning a long-time use for the site with the 6-month fair as an interim part, “we have turned it around,” making the fair the focus and then scrambling to decide on a more permanent use, he said. Oberlander said he admires the city’s plan for ultimate development of part of the Expo site as an area of mixed residential units, small businesses and recreation facilities. “That is positive, and gives me hope,” he said. But, he added, “it will take 20 years”--and there is no guarantee that the politicians will carry it out.

Gibson, the art historian, said fairs never have a lasting impact on the wealth of the host city. He said the slowest economic growth of any city in Canada has been in Montreal since the 1967 world’s fair.

Impact on Architecture

In the past, he went on, fairs had their greatest impact in non-economic areas, particularly through architecture. He said the Chicago fair “made neoclassical architecture secure from 1890 until the entry of modernism in the 1930s.”

“This fair is marked by stylistic ambiguity,” he said. “Nothing has emerged as a characteristic of Vancouver. . . . We have failed to use Expo to document the uniqueness of the city.”

Oberlander seconded this view, pointing out that perhaps the greatest legacies of past world’s fairs are the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Crystal Palace in London. “I can’t think of a thing that will be left behind on this site that will be memorable,” he said.

What will be seen at the May opening will be groups of squat, prefabricated, featureless buildings facing a series of concrete malls filled with rides, restaurants and sculptures reflecting the fair’s theme. There are only three permanent structures on the entire site and none is considered to have much in the way of artistic merit.

Gibson said this is particularly ironic since Vancouver is the home of Canada’s most famous architect, Arthur Erickson, who was not even asked to bid on an Expo project.

“It isn’t the first time the best architect was left out,” Gibson said, “but it is sad. It is a missed opportunity, particularly for rethreading the fabric of the city, to create a visual face to mark Vancouver as a great city.”

Still, Oberlander and Gibson both said there are some benefits.

Benefits Expected

“Expo has raised spirits,” Gibson said, “and it will have a cultural impact, and the most positive aspect is that the government has been sensitive to citizen involvement.”

Oberlander said the choice of the site, in part a mud flat with railroad yards on the edge of a lagoon called False Creek, was excellent, since it focused attention on a key part of the city.

Because it includes water, he said, it presented magnificent possibilities such as those that were developed in Baltimore’s inner harbor and Toronto’s lake front. “This could have been made into a usable, useful and humane area,” he said.

The hoped-for restoration of civic and political civility is considered doubtful, though there clearly is a positive aura among Vancouver’s residents as the fair’s opening nears.

But as Barrett, the former premier--he is still a major political force--put it: “Politics is fractured and hard edged.” He does not see this as detrimental and does not want it to change, because “it is more honest.”

“We have a clear-cut fight,” he said.

Harcourt, who is planning to run for the provincial Legislature on the New Democratic ticket in the next election, also takes an inflexible stance when he turns from Expo to talk about politics.

“We’ve got to change the way we run the province,” he said, “or Bennett’s mentality is going to lose our best people. You don’t create things by crapping on everybody.” Harcourt was referring to Bennett’s severe budget cutting in education and other social programs.

Bennett is equally determined not to give an inch to his opponents, or to allow Harcourt or any other politician to take credit for Expo. “While they played politics, we got things done,” he said.

If Expo does not turn out to be the panacea its promoters hope for, and is just a good time with some leftover benefits for the tourist industry, what will have gone wrong? Oberlander has thought about that. “In the past, particularly in the 19th Century, a world’s fair was a real venue of discovery,” he said. “It was an opening to the future, something truly creative and stimulating. But here nothing is truly new. We have a combination of a commercial exposition and theme park, full of rides. It will increase tourism, but is that the best thing?”