KAMOURASKA, QUE.—I have a collection of old newspapers, including the headlines of the end of the Second World War, the 1969 moon landing, and 9/11. Among the collection is the Montreal Gazette headline story from January 1973 in which then-mayor Jean Drapeau declared “The Montreal Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby.” Anticipating that phrase would one day come back to haunt him, I saved it.

Not only did the Olympics have a $350-million deficit, but it took until 2006 to pay it off, reaching a total of $3-billion including interest. Recently, the City of Montreal celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Olympics (July 17 to Aug. 1, 1976) inviting athletes of those games, like gymnast Nadia Comăneci, to attend.

I believe those Olympics will forever be an embarrassment to the city, to the province of Quebec, and to the legacy of Drapeau. As someone who marvelled at his accomplishments—like the Métro, Expo 67, and bringing major league baseball to the city—I liked to cite his optimism, as he would often say “No problems! Only solutions!”

But he soon lost his shine, running city hall like a dictator, and brooking no opposition. His strongman tactics and refusal to be transparent became the subject of endless columns by famed journalist Brian Stewart when he worked the city hall beat for the Gazette.

In the fall of 1970, Drapeau was running for re-election. At the same time, the October Crisis began with the kidnappings of James Cross and Pierre Laporte. Drapeau joined then-premier Robert Bourassa in insisting then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau invoke the War Measures Act (a fact many have forgotten). Seeing an opportunity, Drapeau fraudulently accused the left-wing opposition Front d’action politique party of having links to the Front de libération du Québec, and won a resounding victory.

It was Drapeau who set out a one-page budget for the Olympics, imagining huge revenues from Olympic coins, and hired a Parisian architect, Roger Taillibert, who had never experienced Montreal’s winters, to design the Olympic stadium with a tower and retractable roof. The stadium’s tenants, the Montreal Alouettes, moved to the Percival Molson Memorial Stadium at McGill in 1998, and the Expos left for Washington, D.C., in 2004.  

My friend Nick Auf der Maur is remembered as a boulevardier, columnist, and city councillor, but his greatest contribution was his 1976 book The Billion-Dollar Game, which documented the scandals, corruption, and mismanagement of the Olympics.

For example, when a strike at the site in 1975 led to delays, labour leader Louis Laberge casually said “We can hold the Olympics in 1977.” It was clear Drapeau had lost control, and in November 1975, Bourassa appointed municipal affairs minister Victor Goldbloom to be responsible for the Olympics Installations Board. He accelerated the construction schedule, and set aside the tower and retractable roof. The Games opened as workers were cleaning up construction debris. The tower and retractable roof were finished in 1987.


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As a result of Drapeau’s venality, and the burden I was convinced Montrealers would eventually pay, I vowed to boycott the Games, to not attend them or participate in any way.

Instead, I sat at home and watched on television, similar to most Montrealers who couldn’t afford tickets. Among the stars that summer were Comăneci with her perfect gymnastic “10s,” decathlon gold medal winner Caitlyn Jenner (then competing as Bruce Jenner), boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, and runner Alberto Juantorena. When I went downtown, I could not believe the crowds of people from around the world. 

Cover image courtesy of Terry Mosher

As Terry “Aislin” Mosher’s recent book of cartoons and stories on the Games reveals, for two weeks, Montreal was the centre of the world, hosting a great party. Unfortunately, the hangover has endured: the Olympic Stadium is undergoing renovations to its roof and interior, costing Quebec taxpayers more than a billion dollars. Again.

There is no baseball team or football team as tenants, and more than likely there won’t be one any time soon. The stadium is too far from downtown, is cavernous, and has terrible sightlines. It is the whitest of white elephants. 

But rather than blow it up, then-premier François Legault chose to renovate it, calling it a “symbol of Quebec.” Indeed, a symbol of incompetence, profligacy, corruption, and a two-week party with a 50-year hangover.

Andrew Caddell is retired from Global Affairs Canada, where he was a senior policy adviser. He previously worked as an adviser to Liberal governments. He is a former town councillor in Kamouraska, Que. He can be reached at pipson52@hotmail.com.

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