Louise Arbour missed out on a hostess job at the Canadian Pavilion for Expo 67 due to her height.Illustration by Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail. Source images: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press, Getty Images.
In days long before Duolingo and other apps, learning a new language was all about immersion. For a young Louise Arbour, working the phones at Expo 67 in Montreal let the lawyer-to-be practise the same conversations in English, very slowly, over and over again. In this week’s “How I Spent My Summer,” the former Supreme Court justice tells us how a gig she never wanted made her bilingual.
Let me tell you first about the job I wanted but didn’t get: hostess at the Canadian Pavilion at Expo 67, which was coming to Montreal and absolutely everyone wanted to work there. The salaries were like $150 a week, if I remember correctly, which was a lot of money in those days. Plus, the job provided free passes to go to the Expo whenever you wanted.
I didn’t get the hostess job because I was too short; they required hostesses to be 5 foot 2 and I was only 5 feet tall. This was before the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, obviously, you can’t do this any more. That’s good, because I might have even shrunk a little since then.
The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job anyhow, because I didn’t speak enough English. I’d already been rejected from a retail position as a sales clerk for that reason. I knew I really needed to learn, because I was going to law school next, but learning a new language at 20 isn’t easy. Luckily, Expo took pity on me and gave me another job as a telephone operator, where I could follow the script and appearances didn’t matter. So, all the other rejects and I ended up on the phone lines called Expo Voix—Voice of Expo.
At any given time, there were about 40 of us sitting in pairs in one big open room, all wearing headsets. The calls would come straight into your ear and you’d say, “Bonjour, Expo Voix.” At the front of the room, lights showed you how many people were waiting and supervisors walked up and down the aisles, telling us to hurry up and go faster. I mostly worked the evening shift, 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., at which point I’d go right to the Expo party and dance all night. Afterwards, I’d hitchhike home. It was a different era.
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My job was to know everything I could about Expo 67. People would call asking about tickets, shows, hotel reservations and information about the pavilions. Lots of the callers were American tourists, so these conversations often had to be in English, which I dreaded at first. But I found being on the phone made these conversations easier, because nobody sees you so you don’t have to be shy or embarrassed. Whenever I couldn’t understand someone, I’d say my favourite line, “Can you repeat that? The connection here is very bad.” Then they’d speak louder and slower, and maybe sometimes they had to say it 10 times, but I always figured it out.
The calls were very repetitive, which might have been boring otherwise, but for someone trying to learn a new language, it was perfect. I probably said, “Sorry to keep you waiting” every 30 seconds. I heard the same questions over and over. People were often lost and needed the same directions. I’d say, “Where are you?” and they’d say, “I’m just across the bridge.” Everyone was always just across the bridge. At some point, I introduced swearing into my limited English vocabulary and the managers had to tell me to clean it up.
Misunderstandings and translation errors happened all the time. One man called very late at night and let’s just say he wasn’t looking for a warehouse. People weren’t always nice to me. But of all the summer jobs out there, it wasn’t the worst, and being at Expo 67 made it so worth it. Montreal was on fire that year. We’d just gotten the subway and just being a little part of the excitement was so much fun.
By the next summer, the Expo site had been transformed into an amusement park called La Ronde. There were rides, a Ferris wheel, restaurants and bars. I was still only five feet, but my English was much better, so this time around I was hired as a hostess after all. This might sound normal until I tell you that there was a restaurant trend then for costumes. All the waiters were dressed as monks and I was dressed like a nun with a décolleté in the back. I think there’s a picture of me in my uniform, but I really hope nobody ever finds it.