Montréal '64 to '68

In the years leading up to Expo 67, a prestigious monthly magazine about the city of Montreal was published. Featuring slick photography and bilingual articles, Montréal '64, '65, '66 and '67 sought to generate buzz surrounding the 1967 World Exhibition and its host city.

Produced and mailed to over 700,000 addresses throughout the world, Montréal magazine was the brain child of mayor Jean Drapeau. In his 1997 book La petite histoire d'Expo 67, ex-director of public relations Yves Jasmin recounts that a chunk of funding for the magazine was taken out of the already minuscule budget destined to promote and advertise Expo 67. The cost of the publication ran at 250,000$ per year at the time, with 150,000$ of it covered by the Expo corporation.

While mayor Drapeau would have liked Montréal magazine (and Expo itself, for that matter) to go on forever, the monthly glossy met its demise in late 1968. Though it had survived Expo's closing (and arguably, its initial raison d'être), sharp increases in postal rates forced Montreal '68 to cease publication after its October issue.

Montréal magazine remains a testament to the economic and cultural boom that the city experienced in the 1960's. Special year-by-year bound editions of Montréal '64 to '68 were created and I am fortunate enough to own them all. These precious documents serve me constantly as a source of information and photographs for Expo Lounge blog posts...

images: personal collection