Tod MaffinCanadian Commentator, From Far and Wide · Emotional Support Canadian

Forty years later, Expo 86 is still an unfinished argument — exactly how it should be.

3 May 2026 · 3 min

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2:48

In this commentary, the speaker reflects on the 40‑year legacy of Expo 86 in Vancouver. He celebrates the fair’s massive scale (22 million visitors) and its lasting infrastructure—False Creek’s redevelopment, the new subway, Canada Place, and Science World—while also highlighting the darker side: the forced eviction of over 1,000 low‑income residents from the Downtown Eastside, often with only a day’s notice, and the protests and cultural backlash that followed (including a punk album). The speaker uses a recent CBC call‑in show as a microcosm of how the event is remembered, noting both the celebratory media narratives and the persistent grievances voiced by displaced residents. He situates Expo 86 within Canada’s broader struggle to confront historical injustices—racism, treatment of Indigenous peoples, and the tension between honest acknowledgment and denial. The monologue ends with a critique of contemporary attempts to rewrite history (curriculum changes, removal of “equity” from federal sites) and argues that Canada’s historical record is written through ongoing public arguments rather than grand monuments, making it messy but legible.

Chapters

Expo 86 opened 40 years ago. It was genuinely extraordinary. 22 million people came to Vancouver. False Creek went from industrial wasteland to global residential village. We got a new subway, Canada Place, Science World. Yesterday I was on the CBC talking about its legacy. One guest talked about how much fun it was, I mentioned how I asked my first ever girlfriend out there. It was positive. The show was a call-in show. But the first caller they had on was mad. He talked about the displacement of over 1,000 low-income residents from the Downtown Eastside in the run-up to the fair. People evicted from low-rent hotels with sometimes a single day's notice. Legal at the time because they lived in hotels, not apartments. 40 years later, this guy was still pissed. And the host of the show, remember presiding over what was billed as a celebration of Canadian pride, Let him talk. For a long while, too. We don't have a perfect track record of confronting our own history here. Like our friends in the South, we've had a long and uncomfortable list of things that we got wrong. Racism. How we've treated Indigenous people. But there is a difference between being imperfect and being dishonest. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot in the media this week about how Expo brought so much to Vancouver and Canada, and it did— not just tourist dollars. Many people said that Canada grew up that summer. But mixed in with that reminiscing, an art gallery in Surrey with an exhibit this month about Expo, all of it including the evictions and the protests and the punk album that got put out that year. Imperfect, but honest. The great American experiment has failed. School curricula are being rewritten. Archives reviewed for ideological compliance. The word equity scrubbed from federal websites like it's profanity. Is history what happened? Or what we say happened. And yes, some countries will write their history in impressive monuments, carve it into huge mountains, name military bases after it. We choose to write ours in arguments at the rink, in call-in shows, in punk albums. It's not always pretty, but at least it's legible.