Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
with a savage market correction of 40 percent under the weight of mortgage
interest rates that had raced to 20 percent, leaving Vancouver homeowners
confronting negative equity and, for some, property foreclosure (Skaburskis
1988). The bad news accumulated, as the provincial economy shrank eight
percent in 1982 while unemployment approached 15 percent in 1984 and
exceeded 10 percent for most of the decade, with jobs decimated in the
staple export sectors of forestry and mining (Barnes et al. 1992; Government
of BC 1998).
Stiff medicine was required for so serious an ailment and it took the form
of a wide-ranging and combative 'restraint' program introduced by the
Social Credit government that included downsizing the civil service, anti-
union legislation, privatization and contracting out and the compression of
social services (Resnick 1987; Mitchell 2004). As successive interest groups
became alienated by Social Credit policy, determined opposition emerged
in the province's traditionally polarized political arena, and in 1983 follow-
ing marches and demonstrations by a 'Solidarity Coalition', BC came
within a whisker of a general strike. In this economic meltdown and period
of social turbulence, the stark contrast of rapid economic growth in the
Asia Pacific region was plain for (almost) all to see (Goldberg 1985; Nemetz
1986). In British Columbia as a whole, tourism appeared to be one of the
few bright lights on the economic horizon (Government of Canada 1984),
and led to a sustained programme of place marketing nationally and over-
seas. The 1986 world fair in Vancouver featured a convergence of neo-
liberal policy, Pacific Rim aspirations and the new post-industrial service
economy. It confirmed too that neo-liberalism does not mean the reduc-
tion of state power, but rather its energetic re-direction toward an entrepre-
neurial ethos.
Expo 86: The Circus Comes to Town
The world fair held on the edge of downtown Vancouver over a six-month
period represented a local version of neo-liberalism as a society of the spec-
tacle (Debord 1970). The plan for the fair was hatched in 1979 by Bill
Bennett, Premier of British Columbia, to celebrate the 1986 centenary of
Vancouver's founding and the arrival of the first trans-continental passenger
train (Anderson and Wachtel 1986; Government of Canada 1986; Ley and
Olds 1988). Expo was initially conceived as a transportation fair, in part to
corral federal funds to aid development of a rapid transit system. But with
economic conditions deteriorating, the fair's objectives underwent transi-
tion, and job creation and economic development became prominent. As
neo-liberalism and recession bit, the Cabinet declared, in the face of the
highly-unionized and depressed construction industry, that Expo would be
