Find My Country

When people talk about the golden age of Montreal, it is hard to ignore the period of time between 1960 and 1976. During this the period of time, Jean Drapeau held the mayoral office in Montreal. This is the first (and only) time in modern history that the office was held by someone with more than a mediocre mind. Drapeau was a fiesty lawyer who had fought for the rights of striking asbestos miners in 1950s, and helped lead an inquiry into police corruption in Montreal. He also had a lifelong obsession with politics, losing elections at the federal level as early as 1942. He first came to power in Montreal in 1954, and then finally took a 26 year stranglehold on the mayoral office in 1960. He was eventually affectionately labelled as “Monsieur le maire” – Mister Mayor. (Picture from the City of Montreal website)

The first Mayor who had accomplished anything since John Abbott (the third person to be Canadian prime minister), Drapeau was responsible for the construction of a subway system (the Montreal Metro) that was considered world-class for its time. He also was responsible for the coming of the World’s Fair in 1967 and the creation of Île Sainte-Hélène – a man-made island made out of the combination of dirt removed during the excavations done during subway construction and several small islands. The accomplishments of Jean Drapeau between 1960 and 1972 are incontestable; anyone with any sense of fairness would have to grant him his due as a great mayor for the greatest city in Canada (at the time).

One can be forgiven for thinking the Olympics of 1976 would be no different. Unfortunately, the Olympics of 1976 were a disaster. Greed, corruption, and idiocy mingled to form the last Olympic Games that had ever lost money. At the center of this was the Olympic Stadium – or the Toilet Bowl as Jack Todd lovingly calls it in the pages of the Montreal Gazette.

The first thing anyone will tell you about the Olympic Stadium is that it was completely dominated by corrupt unions and organized crime. People would drive trucks filled with concrete into the stadium, only to drive out with them and drive back in – sometimes charging the city 4 or 5 times for the same load of concrete. The site of the stadium was poorly selected – it is in a part of the city that is poor to this day, and far outside of the city center. In a show of execution-worthy criminal idiocy, construction was started on a part of the island which was structurally unsound, with geological features that made it nearly impossible to build such a large structure without large cost over-runs in the form of new studies, new supports and thicker concrete slabs.

It is almost an outright lie to call it “Olympic Stadium” since most of it didn’t even exist during the olympics. The bigunions, in a recurring theme within Quebec history, went on strike and the Stadium roof was never completed. Neither was the tower photographed above for that matter – the Stadium was only made functionally complete in 1987 – a good 11 years late. The “Big O” wasn’t too stable even once it was complete – the roof kept tearing open, and an internal concrete pillar collapsed, causing the Montreal Expos to leave the stadium for their last 13 games in 1991.

Today, the Olympic Stadium is the host to… well nothing really. They have an olympic sized pool that can be rented out, and a funicular that costs 14 dollars (!!!) to ride to the top. It is a spectacular view of high density housing and distant glory – Mount Royal and the large buildings on Rene Levesque and St. Catherine’s street. It is popularly believed that the Montreal Expos were doomed in Montreal because of their location in this low-income residential area of the island.

Jean Drapeau hung on to lead Montreal into irrelevancy. Under his leadership, corporate headquarters fled Montreal, and it became impotent against the economic downturns of the late 70s and 80s. He brought party politics to municipal governance and became another Maurice Duplessis – hanging on long enough to become irrelevant. If Montreal wants to change its mayoral impotence, it is time for them to take back the city, like they took back Quebec in the 1960s. Montreal is still waiting for a Quiet Revolution of its own, and its own Jean Lesage. There will be no Jean Lesage for this city, however. Montrealers don’t care about municipal elections – only 36.1% voted in 1990’s election, and there was an average of 44.8% turnout throughout the 90s.

The impotent failure of the Olympic Stadium, coupled with the province of Quebec’s willful ignorance, is as Montreal as a two cheeked kiss. The Olympic Stadium is such a complete failure that the first search result on Google leads to a broken link – a worthy conclusion for such a depressing chapter of our history.