Forty years ago, I was sitting in front of a manual typewriter in the press room at Expo 86, hammering out a story about the world fair.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana had just opened Expo.
I had been assigned to one of the positions along the royal walking route under very, very strict rules imposed by the security people, including a ban on journalists getting too close to the couple.
Some British photographers took up position with stepladders to ensure they could shoot over the crowd, their cameras clacking away.
As a radio reporter, I only had to worry about audio.
I remember thinking Diana seemed a little pale, but my clearest memory, oddly, was how much better Charles looked in person, compared to the many photographs of him.
It was hot and muggy.
A few minutes after passing by my spot, during a stop at the California pavilion, Diana had a fainting spell, and that became a big story.
It triggered a storm of speculation that she was pregnant, which she denied.
Diana would, much later, explain that it was due to extreme strain, hunger, and the physical cost of her battle with bulimia.
At the radio network I was working for, reporters were rotated in for several days to cover the fair, then returned to regular assignments.
After about a month of that, a colleague at another network pointed out we had unlimited access to the site and should be taking advantage of it.
Which is how I ended up taking a ride on the Scream Machine roller coaster, among other things.
For me, the highlight was the Spirit Lodge, the GM pavilion, which expressed the show theme of “man in motion” featuring an Indigenous storyteller telling a tale of a magic canoe, and a fire with smoke that formed different shapes.
While the “Ramses II and His Time” exhibition deserved all the attention it received, the Inca exhibition by Peru was every bit as amazing, showing 300 ancient Incan and pre-Columbian artifacts that included a 1,000 year old Mummy, and the gold-inlaid iron sword wielded by conquistador Francisco Pizarro.
And yes, I stood in line at McBarge, and gawked at the world’s largest hockey stick.
A few months after Charles and Diana, another royal, Princess Margaret, paid Expo a visit and reporters were offered an off-the-record chance to meet her, an opportunity that rendered some breathless with excitement, while others, like me, politely passed.
On the 40th anniversary of Expo 86, there are many reminders of its legacy, including Canada’s first OMNIMAX theatre in the glittering geodesic dome that was repurposed as Science World, and Canada Place with its five sails, along with SkyTrain and the Coquihalla Highway, both built for the fair.