Should Toronto try for the 2025 World Expo? Kristyn Wong-Tam says yes
Kristyn Wong-Tam has a vision for Toronto’s waterfront that doesn’t involve mega-casinos: develop it for the 2025 World Expo. The councillor plans to introduce a motion this June to ask city staff to investigate whether making a bid for the 2025 expo (due by 2016) is feasible, and she has already started talking to labour, business and political bigwigs. Wong-Tam told the Globe and Mail that the months-long international event would attract tourist dollars, create jobs and leave a better city-building legacy than any gambling complex (it, along with the Pan Am Games, may also help fill up the Olympic-sized hole in Toronto’s ego). However, Toronto council didn’t succeed the last time it tried to get the World Expo: in 2006, council missed the bid deadline for the 2015 expo because the feds and the provincial government couldn’t decide on how to cover the operating shortfalls. [Globe and Mail]
I’m so glad to hear that Toronto could throw its hat in the ring for 2025. I was disappointed that no North American city bid for Expo 2020 (or the smaller 2017). In 2025, it will have been 39 years since the last world’s fair on this continent: Vancouver’s Expo ’86.
With the success of Shanghai’s Expo 2010, the great plans for Milan’s Expo 2015, and five cities bidding for Expo 2020, it’s time our continent hosted this symbol of optimism and progress.
Urso Chappell
ExpoMuseum.com
only if it means a good clean up, new facilities/ infrastructure and modernised transit. if we cannot pull that off we wont be impressing anyone.