1967 - Pierre Berton
Pierre Berton
1997, 390 pages
Pierre Berton talks about a Canada that seems hard to understand – confident, celebratory, free-spending, looking forward into a limitless future. 1967 marked the year of Canada’s centennial celebrations, the extreme success that was Expo 67, social and political structures about to shift in massive ways. In this book, Pierre Berton discusses that year on the cusp. Politics are about to change with the emergence of Pierre Trudeau. The NHL is about to go from six teams to twelve, and Toronto faced Montreal in the Stanley Cup finals for the last time. Canada is celebrating its first 100 years by building hockey arenas, schools, civic centres meant to bring communities together. Expo 67 brought Canada’s to the world’s attention, and brought the world to Canadians. Quebec is dealing with its place in Canadian society. Hippies are taking over, and parents just don’t understand. Berton goes through it all with his trademark style.
So where does it fit in his repertoire? Well, it was pretty good, but not great. I didn’t think there was a lot at stake.
I have often criticized Isaac Asimov’s later works, saying that someone must have drove a dump truck full of money up to his back door, and that they felt like he was phoning it in. I wouldn’t be quite so critical of this book, but it definitely felt unnecessary. I did find the chapters on Expo 67 and the foundations of Quebec’s sovereignty movement to be quite fascinating, and would have preferred individual books on these subjects rather than the padding of hippies, hockey and crazy Centennial celebrations.
