Overview
The nation began to feel far more nationalistic than before, with a generation raised in a country fully detached from Britain. The new Canadian flag served as a symbol and a catalyst for this. In Quebec, the Quiet Revolution was overthrowing the oligarchy of francophone clergy and anglophone businessmen, and French Canadian pride and nationalism were becoming a national political force.
The Canadian economy was at its post-war peak, and levels of prosperity and quality of life were at all-time highs. Many of the most important elements of Canada's welfare state were coming on line, such as Medicare and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
These events were coupled with the coming of age of the baby boom and the regeneration of music, literature, and art that the 1960s brought around the world. The baby boomers, who have since dominated Canada's culture, tend to view the period as Canada's halcyon days.
1967 was an exciting year for Canadians. Communities across the country planned celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of confederation. The Federal Government sponsored events from coast to coast and provided funding and organization for such things as the Centennial Train and the Centennial Voyageur Canoe Pageant. Even Canada's military got the spirit by producing the Canadian Armed Forces Tattoo 1967 that toured the country from coast to coast with over 150 shows from St. John's, Newfoundland to Victoria, BC with a two week long production at EXPO 67 in Montreal. Tattoo 1967 was so successful, there were calls to have the show tour the world as a representative of Canadian culture. [2] The show set a world's record for the longest running military tattoo, a record that has never been equaled. [3]
While to Montreal it was the year of Expo, to Toronto it was the culmination of the Toronto Maple Leafs dynasty of the 1960s, with the team winning its fourth Stanley Cup in six years by defeating its arch-rival, the Montreal Canadiens, in the last all-Canadian Stanley Cup Finals until 1986.
Author and historian Pierre Berton famously referred to 1967 as Canada's last good year . In his analysis, the years following saw much of 1967's hopefulness disappear. In the early 1970s, the oil shock and other factors hammered the Canadian economy. Quebec separatism led to divisive debates and an economic decline of Montreal and Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorism. The Vietnam War and Watergate Scandal in the United States also had profound effects on Canadians. Berton reported that Toronto hockey fans also note that the Maple Leafs have not won a Stanley Cup since. [4]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
