CN IMAX Theatre Canada Place

This IMAX theater actually opened in 1986 as a part of the Canadian Pavilion exhibit which was housed in what is now Canada Place. (Canada Place was connected to the main Expo site at False Creek by a Skytrain shuttle line). Upon entering the pavilion, fairgoers saw a documentary film that was made in Douglas Trumbull’s Showscan process. Then each fairgoer had to choose one of three additional presentations, one of which was in the IMAX theater. That film was in 3-D, one of the first, if not the first, IMAX 3-D film. Except for the IMAX theater, the other theaters that were part of the Canadian exhibit were temporary and ceased to exist after Canada Place took on its permanent role as cruise ship terminal and convention center.

This IMAX theater ceased operations on October 1, 2009.

Alongside the OMNIMAX, the CN IMAX Theatre at Canada Place started life as an exhibit as part of Expo ‘86, or the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication, that was held in Vancouver and lasted from May 2, 1986, until October 13, 1986. During this moment, the CN IMAX Theatre at Canada Place played the film “Transitions” in a loop, with a total of 1.7 million visitors watching the movie throughout its run, which is 2,000,000 more visitors than the 1.5 million visitors who went to see “A Freedom To Move” at the nearby OMNIMAX. Both the OMNIMAX and the CN IMAX Canada Place opened and closed on the same exact days as the Expo ‘86 event.

Exactly a few months after closure, spokesman Paul Fraser announced on March 2, 1987, that the then-485-seat IMAX will be going under renovations and scheduled to reopen by early-May of that year. That month, Graeme Ferguson visited the renovation site of the CN IMAX for a preview on May 6, 1987, as he was the first person giving a sneak preview of their relaunch as a generic IMAX theater including a test screening with its giant 50x70ft screen. The CN IMAX Theatre at Canada Place reopened its doors to the public two days later on May 8, 1987, screening two 37-minute space-oriented films playing in a loop, “The Dream Is Alive” (a 1985 production with narration by legendary CBS News anchor and former CBS Evening News host Walter Cronkite that gives viewers a window seat aboard the space shuttle that was captured by 14 NASA astronauts on three shuttle missions in 1984 including shots of Cape Canaveral) and “Hail Columbia” (a 1982 film all about the Space Shuttle Columbia).