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In this episode of Trint’s “A Photo A Story”, Jeff goes back to 1986 and the world’s fair “Expo 86” in Vancouver. One of his earliest “big” assignments as a young reporter for Toronto’s Global Television News. The fair’s theme was Transportation and Communication. An opportunity for the world to come together to showcase the best of each country. 

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For the USA and USSR however, it was an event that was awkwardly timed. The US was showcasing space exploration, the USSR was showcasing nuclear power. But just weeks before the fair opened the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe happened and the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Sadly their pavilions were already built and premiering on the world stage.

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Watch the video above or see Trint in action by viewing a read-only link of this transcript, with playback features to read-along with the video. Or if you’d just like the text, you’ll find Jeff’s story below.

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Jeff: [00:00:00] One of the interesting takeaways of an assignment like this, which seems like it's going to be fun and fluffy, is that even when you're on this kind of assignment, there is real news. 

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Jeff: [00:00:18] I was really young in this picture. This is Vancouver. It is 1986 and it is the World's Fair Expo 86. And I was a young reporter at Global News, one of the networks in Canada working out of Toronto. And I was part of the team sent to Expo 86 for a month or so to cover the opening in May of that year. And it was a very exciting assignment, It was fun. It wasn't about horrible things and mayhem. It was actually about this World's Fair celebrating transportation and communication. 

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Jeff: [00:00:51] It's really interesting to look at this picture, how formal TV was, how dressy it was, how long sort of moppish my hair is. But I remember it being this great adventure. You know, you're a young reporter and you get to travel to places and see places that people pay to go to, and you're behind the scenes and you have this great access. 

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Jeff: [00:01:10] For the opening ceremonies in early May of of 1986, Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, flew to Vancouver to open the World's Fair. At that point, the world was still infatuated with them, and it was a very, very big deal. 

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Jeff: [00:01:28] You know, even when you're covering a story as light as that, and most of the reports are pretty fun, there is, there can be serious stories. And and one of the most memorable from that era was the unintended consequences of the American and Soviet pavilions. 

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Jeff: [00:01:48] The American pavilion, which had been planned obviously years in advance, was a celebration of U.S. space exploration and U.S. space travel. Tragically, just months before Expo 86 opened, there was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger with all the crew being killed. And so the celebration had a kind of dark cloud over it. 

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Jeff: [00:02:11] But that was actually overshadowed by the Soviet pavilion, which was a celebration of Soviet nuclear technology, because just a week before this World's Fair opened in 1986, there was the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, part of the Soviet orbit at the time. And one of the reasons it's believed that the Soviet Union fell apart. But of course, the pavilion was built, the doors had to open, and there it was.

‍Jeff: [00:02:40] So even an assignment as as light and maybe even fluffy as covering a World's Fair, you know, it had its edge and had its news stories.