The 6th Day|BC Place — the white dome that was the future's arena

The 6th Day opens at a football game, because the film needs to establish its near-future world quickly and a packed stadium does that in one shot. The stadium is BC Place, on the north shore of False Creek in downtown Vancouver, and in 2000 it looked nothing like it does today.

When the cameras rolled it was still wearing the original roof: a vast white air-supported dome of teflon-coated fibreglass, held up by nothing but the pressure of the air inside, the largest structure of its kind in the world when it opened in 1983. You entered through revolving doors and airlocks because opening an ordinary door would have bled the roof. From across the water the thing looked like a marshmallow, and Vancouverites called it that without much affection. It was also the first covered stadium in Canada, built for Expo 86, and it is where the Expo opening ceremonies and later the 2010 Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies were held.

The dome is gone. In 2010 and 2011 the stadium was gutted and re-roofed with a cable-supported retractable canopy hung from thirty-six masts, and the silhouette on the skyline changed completely. So the exterior in the film no longer exists in the form the film shot. The bowl underneath it does — same footprint, same site, same address at 777 Pacific Boulevard, still the home of the BC Lions and the Whitecaps.

Walk the seawall along False Creek from Science World toward the Cambie Bridge and watch the masts come up over the rooftops. If the roof is open you will see straight through to the sky above the field. Then look at a photograph from 2000 and note what the film could take for granted and you cannot: a plain white curve, no masts, no cables, a shape the city no longer makes.

Location photo: BC Place, Vancouver (Wikimedia Commons).