AA-2026-32C7D7
On the image
Somewhere in the mid-1950s, General Motors decided that the best way to sell the future was to display it outdoors, surrounded by rockets, observation towers, and a diesel locomotive bearing the slogan 'Everywhere West' in the confident script of a company that had never once doubted itself. The Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto was exactly the kind of venue that took this seriously — a sprawling late-summer fairground where corporations erected pavilions the size of aircraft hangars and filled them with the products that were going to make everything better, which in 1955 mostly meant bigger engines and aerodynamic styling on things that had previously gotten along fine without it. The GM Trucks and Coach signage presides over a midway already crowded with the visual vocabulary of postwar optimism: gantry structures that looked vaguely space-age whether or not they served any purpose, and at least one actual rocket on a pole, because by then a rocket on a pole was simply how you told people you were serious about the future. The locomotive in the foreground is doing the work of two pitches at once — selling rail travel to a public that was quietly about to abandon it for the Interstate — which makes the 'Everywhere West' tagline read, from this distance, less like a promise and more like a farewell.
Visually related — by likeness
GM Truck & Coach Pavilion, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, c.1955. 1953–1958. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-32C7D7. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/gm-truck-coach-pavilion-canadian-national-exhibition-toronto-c-1955.
@misc{aaAA202632C7D7,
title = {GM Truck \& Coach Pavilion, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, c.1955},
year = {1953–1958},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-32C7D7},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/gm-truck-coach-pavilion-canadian-national-exhibition-toronto-c-1955}
}TY - ART TI - GM Truck & Coach Pavilion, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, c.1955 PY - 1953–1958 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-32C7D7 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/gm-truck-coach-pavilion-canadian-national-exhibition-toronto-c-1955 ER -
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