The year 1969 was celebrated as professional baseball's centennial and a new dimension was added to the game on April 8 when the Montreal Expos, Canada's first majorleague team, played their first game, beating the New York Mets 11–10 at Shea Stadium. Six days later, on April 14, baseball became truly international as the first big-league game ever played outside the United States took place at Jarry Park in Montreal. The language of baseball became internationalized, too: Batters were also "frappeurs". Pitchers were also "lanceurs". A bunt was an "amorti". The Expos beat St. Louis that day. The National League had granted Montreal an expansion team on May 27,1968. But early euphoria was succeeded by growing worry as deadlines passed with commitments unfulfilled. Several of the original 10 investors who agreed to put up $1 million each, withdrew. Just when it seemed certain the franchise would be lost, Charles R. Bronfman, then 37 and a top executive and officer of The Seagram Company Ltd., assumed leadership of the small group that saved the team. Basically the same group, including prominent Montreal businessmen Hugh Hallward and Lorne C. Webster, continues to operate the franchise.

The Expos were received enthusiastically in Montreal and adopted by people all across the country from the beginning, but their move to Olympic Stadium in 1977 signalled a new era. Crowds set records there from the first day and attendance soared above two million for the first time during the 1979 season. The Expos now became an organization with which others had to reckon. In the five seasons from 1979-83, they won more games than any other team in the National League and continued to draw record crowds. But they have done much more throughout their history than simply provide enjoyment and entertainment.

They have had, for example, a significant economic impact. Surveys have shown that the Expos, directly or indirectly, annually account for more than 2,500 man-years of employment and generate total economic benefits for Montreal and Quebec province of more than $100 million per year. The Expos, during pennant races, also have aroused tremendous interest and support from coast to coast. They became something on which Canadians could agree, a positive force that gave people in all parts of the country and from all walks of life something in common.

Late in the 1979 season, a time of considerable ferment in the political arena, Charles Lynch, the highly-respected national columnist for the Southam newspaper group, wrote that the Expos "cut through language and cultural barriers and did more for the national psyche than a dozen royal commissions or a million pep talks ... more for the cause of Canadian unity this summer than all of the speeches on the unity question put together."

They called it Expomania, and it continues to recur. It is one measure of the unquestioned success of the franchise, which over two decades has become a part of Canadian life.