CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: Montreal’s Biosphère: From Expo 67 to Museum

Paragraph A

In 1967, Canada celebrated its hundredth birthday, and Montreal marked the occasion by hosting a world’s fair, Expo 67. The fair was held on islands in the St. Lawrence River, including Île Sainte-Hélène, which was enlarged for the event, and Île Notre-Dame, which was built largely from rock dug out during the construction of the city’s new metro. Dozens of countries put up pavilions, and over six months the fair recorded more than 50 million visits. Among the most popular buildings was the pavilion of the United States: a huge, see-through sphere that seemed almost to float above the trees. Another landmark of the fair, the Habitat 67 housing complex, still stands across the water from the islands.

Paragraph B

The pavilion was designed by the American inventor and architect R. Buckminster Fuller, who was known for his geodesic domes. He had spent years promoting them as an efficient way to cover large spaces using very little material. Such a dome is made of a network of triangles, a shape that spreads weight evenly, so the structure can be both very light and very strong. The Montreal dome was built from thousands of steel tubes and covered with clear acrylic panels. Inside, visitors found displays of American art, film and space exploration, and the fair’s elevated Minirail train passed right through the building, giving passengers a view of the exhibits from above.

Paragraph C

After Expo closed, many of its pavilions stayed open for several summers as part of an exhibition called Man and His World, and the sphere remained one of its attractions. Over time, however, some of the other pavilions were closed or taken down. Then, in 1976, a fire broke out during repair work. The acrylic covering caught fire and was destroyed in a short time, but the steel frame survived largely undamaged. Photographs of the blackened skeleton standing against the sky became a sad symbol of how far the site had fallen since the great days of the fair.

Paragraph D

For years afterward, the bare frame stood empty on the island while people debated what to do with it. Proposals came and went, and some feared that the structure would eventually be torn down. In the end, the federal government chose to give it a new life, and the building reopened in 1995 as a museum devoted to the environment. Today, it is known as the Biosphère, a name taken from the word for the part of the Earth where life exists, and its exhibits help visitors understand issues such as climate change, water and biodiversity, while the steel frame itself remains one of Montreal’s best-known landmarks. Visitors can still walk beneath it, and on a clear day the views across the river toward downtown are striking.