Conan O'Brien recalls his wild Expo 86 Vancouver adventure with Greg Daniels
On a recent episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast featuring guest Greg Daniels, Expo 86 in Vancouver was discussed.
Daniels, a notable writer who has been behind huge shows like The Simpsons, The Office, Parks and Recreation, and many others, incorrectly remembered it as Expo 87.
“It was like Expo 87 or something,” Daniels says as the pair discuss the relevance of the event.
Daniels and O’Brien go way back, having been collaborators in O’Brien’s Harvard days.
O’Brien was reminiscing, saying, “We just had a lot of fun doing weird things.”
“I think we had seen in the news that Princess Diana and her husband Charles had just been to Vancouver for a fair,” O’Brien says before Daniels butts in with his Expo 87 comment.
Daniels added that an ad for a different Expo event made it look very impressive.
“We managed to convince ourselves that if we missed Expo 87 in Vancouver, we would regret it for the rest of our lives,” Daniels said, with O’Brien adding that he stands by that today.
So, O’Brien and Daniels apparently travelled to Seattle soon after. After arriving in Seattle by plane, they then drove in a rental Hyundai to Vancouver.
It turns out the pair got to the Expo after it was over, so there wasn’t much to see.
However, they did discover something else in their motel room: a Canadian television series called The Beachcombers, which aired from the 1970s to the 1990s. According to the Wikipedia series overview, the comedy-drama followed a log salvager in B.C.
They shifted their attention away from Expo 86 and decided to begin a quest to meet a specific actor on The Beachcombers, which led them to Gibsons, a coastal town in B.C. They travelled over via a fishing boat, the driver of which they somehow convinced to travel faster than a ferry.
Amazingly, once they got to the area they were searching for, they divided and conquered, banging on doors. Eventually, they found the actor they were searching for.
“We both shake his hand, he doesn’t know what’s happening,” O’Brien said.
They had to rush back to catch a flight, but their story shows that it isn’t about the destination but the journey, especially if you arrive at the event destination after the event’s over.
You can catch the Vancouver chat on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend below, timestamped for your convenience:
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