Canada Island
From the Official Guidebook (p. 106):
Historically, our friendly neighbor to the north, Canada, has shared more with the United States than borders. Our cultural heritage, industry and progressive outlook have common origins. And we share with Canada a concern about another heritage, our environment.
You'll want to see the beautiful pavilion of the province of British Columbia at the entrance to the Canadian exhibit. Then move into the environmental paradise which has been created by the Canadian government on Cannon Island. Canadian national participation does not involve architecture. Landscaping has been developed on the site to give the island a feeling of open woodland and meadow, complete with rock outcroppings and falling water. Canada has brought small inhabitants to the island. Squirrels, chipmunks, marmots and other creatures normally found in a Northwest island have been transplanted for your enjoyment.
The Canadian exhibit has been developed by landscape architects to emphasize three features: A mini-amphitheatre in which you'll enjoy amateur concerts and performances of various kinds; a sweeping lookout view to the Spokane River, and a children's playground equipped with delightful playthings, all created from recycled materials.
The Canadian exhibit provides a restful haven for the weary. It is of special interest to plant lovers. Approximately 45 different species of evergreen and deciduous trees and perennial plants are flourishing in abundance in the park. The Canadian arboreal exhibition has been built as an expression of Canadian friendship and good will toward the United States, and in particular the citizens of the Pacific Northwest and Spokane. It will remain as a permanent feature of the Spokane Riverside Park after Expo '74 closes.
(Note that this text refers to the fair's location as Riverside Park, rather than Riverfront Park.)
Entertainment at Alberta Amphitheater from ViewMaster reel.
From Expo ‘74 World’s Fair Spokane (Bowers):
What is this life if, full of care,
We have not time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
- William Henry Davies
“Canada is an enormous country with a great deal of environment to protect and manage. Participation at the Spokane World Exposition has re-enforced our awareness that we cannot undertake that great task without the assistance and cooperation of other countries. Nor, bearing in mind that our world is indeed one world, can we attempt to manage the environment without regard to the needs and interest of those countries.
“Expo ‘74 will be remembered as one of the important initiatives of this decade - like the Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972, the Law of the Sea Conference in Caracas this year, the Oceanographic Exhibition in Okinawa in 1975 and the Vancouver Conference on Human Settlements in 1976 - in focusing the attention of mankind on the urgent need to balance our national technological progress with a sensitivity for the preservation of the planet we have no alternative but to share.
“Canada is proud that one of the permanent reminders of Expo ‘74 will be the Island Park on the Spokane River which, by proclamation of City Council on April 8, 1974, now bears the name ‘Canada Island’ and that the flags of the United States of America and of Canada will fly there together, in perpetuity, to symbolize the enduring friendship between the peoples of our two nations.”
- Patrick Reid, Commissioner General of Canada
Aerial view of Canada Island
From Expo ‘74 World’s Fair Spokane (Bowers):
People have become so accustomed to programmed messages in larger and louder than life-sized audio visuals that to architecturally design an island into a microcosm of Northwest parkland at first seemed a strange way of telling people about a particular country’s involvement in the environment. And yet perhaps that exquisite green city-center park just five minutes away from the busy downtown area told more about the environment and the country it represented than most conventional exhibits could.
Canada, like other countries, was not blind to the fact that tapping earth for its natural resources produces the creature comforts all are grateful to have: central heating, how showers, cars and fast transportation systems that provide a northern country like Canada with tropical fruits in January. But Canada was very aware that the Pacific Northwest is particularly vulnerable to man who now has the power and incentive to riddle the north with dams, transmission lines, roads, pipelines and landing strips. All have the potential to reach out and creep together until even the last great bastion of wilderness is cut up into pieces so small that its wilderness character disappears.
The rate of present progress seemed to be transforming the planet into a human anthill from which all vestiges of the natural permeable world were being slowly obliterated. The result was depriving all of values equally as essential if not more germane to existence than the resource-based comforts gained. Man needs contact with wilderness and wild nature as much as he needs the foodstuffs, ores, and fuels that a tamed nature can yield. And perhaps Canadians, with that stamp of wilderness on their ancestry and their genes, need wilderness a little more than other peoples. A now romanticized reality still so close to the wilderness stage of history, in terms of the genetic and evolutionary time scale, that national differences of a few centuries are of little significance.
From Expo ‘74 World’s Fair Spokane (Bowers):
Science needs wilderness and samples of virgin land of all kinds because the only way science can accurately measure the impact of man’s varied activities on land is to have undisturbed control areas with which to make comparisons.
Industry needs it for the renewable resources, especially the timber, that a healthy wilderness can produce in perpetuity.
Perhaps they need it more than they yet know as a climatic control and as a replenisher and circulator of the atmosphere’s moisture and oxygen.
But above all, in this crowded age, man needs wilderness more than ever before as a place to find ancestral roots, to look back and see where he has been; he needs it as a psychological safety valve for the smothered, pent-up, artificially-induced tensions and frustrations of a way of life for which he is not yet fully adapted. Call it recreation, but it involves much more than just having fun.
Recreational wilderness has become a precious asset. It is a dynamic element of a historical heritage and is needed as a living laboratory, as a sanctuary of orientation where life is reduced to the essentials of food and shelter. And in a clearer untrampled view Canadians see themselves as part of the system of nature, not demi-gods above or below it.
From Expo ‘74 World’s Fair Spokane (Bowers):
If for a few moments on Canada Island people were able to stand and stare, to see the world as if it were in a grain of sand, to be prat of the beauty of nature without sacrificing too much of their urban selves, then Canada Island did its job in heightening a perception of the value of preserving ecology as far as possible and in tune as much as possible in our daily lives.
This evergreen park on “Ile du Canada” was given to the people of Spokane at the close of Expo ‘74.
Alberta, Spokane’s dynamic north eastern neighbor, built an open air amphitheatre on Canada Island which provided an informal place to sit and chat, have a picnic lunch or be entertained. By midsummer, over 100 Albertan groups had performed at Expo ‘74. Their amphitheatre from high noon to long after sundown resounded with the songs, dances and music of artists, both professional and amateurs, who represented Canada’s great Klondike and stampede province.
The tall British Columbia totem poles that welcomed visitors at the entrance to the island led into a superb pavilion. Each month the crafts and skills of different British Columbian fine artists were exhibited in the main hall, varying from exquisite silver and wood objects of Haida artist Bill Reid to the incredible recycled fashions of Evelyn Roth.
The cedar totem pole carved at the British Columbia Pavilion was left as a permanent part of Canada Island.
Children visiting the island were especially fortunate. Russel Yuristy, the Saskatchewan artist, created an original playground for them. His super prairie crow, gogglie glow worms and mountain moose slide proved to be one of the hits of Expo.
