Professor Jean-Phillippe Warren (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University)

Multi-Media Lab (room 482), Discovery Centre, MacOdrum Library starting at 2:30PM followed by a reception in the History Lounge (433 Paterson Hall).

Abstract

Expo 67 was part of the global wave of change that affected all Western societies in the 1960s. The decade saw the democratization of higher education, the rise of the consumer society, and the consolidation of the middle class. These profound changes had specific repercussions depending on the national context. How did the decade affect Quebec? What were the province’s principal adaptations, interpretations, and translations of the sixties? From to the creation of cegeps to l’Osstidcho and the foundation of the Parti québécois, 1960s Quebec was a nation literarily transformed from within. In less than ten years, a ‘priest ridden province’ had become, in the words of Marshall McLuhan, a ‘hippie nation.” Expo 67 both reflected and stimulated the contemporary transformation of Quebec.