Tourists look through smog at Montreal's Olympic Stadium on May 31, 2010.The Canadian Press
Jean Drapeau was mayor of Montreal for 29 years, holding office, with only one interruption, from 1954 to 1986. Here is the address he might give if he could see what is happening in his city today.
My dear fellow Montrealers,
I know that you will be surprised to be hearing from me. I am, after all, dead – have been for a solid quarter of a century. But I’ve followed events in my beloved hometown as best as I can (the WiFi up here is dodgy) and I wish to speak to you on a matter that is close to my heart: the future of the Olympic Stadium.
The Big O, I don’t have to tell you, is one of my greatest and, let’s just say, most controversial accomplishments. When I built it for the 1976 Olympics, our city was enjoying a glorious renaissance. I was its Michelangelo.
If petty minds pointed out that Toronto had surpassed Montreal as Canada’s biggest, richest city, I would simply say: Let Toronto be Milan. Montreal will be Rome.
Canada's newly-appointed Governor-General Jules Leger (left) and Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau (right), listen as Roger Taillibert describes the layout of 'Parc Olympique', the site of the 1976 Olympics.Bettmann/The Canadian Press
I built the city’s first subway system, and it was beautiful. Its rubber-wheeled trains started rolling just in time for the opening of another of my great works, Expo 67, the international exposition that revealed the splendours of our city to the world.
But the Big O was my masterpiece. When the 1976 Olympics were awarded to Montreal, I set out to build something that would put our city on the map – something bold, something new, something truly unique.
The critics said I should retain local architects or at least hold an international competition. Instead I hired a brilliant Frenchman, Roger Taillibert. His design was inspired: an immense seashell in white concrete, with an inclining tower at one end to support its retractable roof.
Montreal's Olympic Stadium is packed as dancers and gymnasts perform a ballet symbolizing a salute to the world during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games on July 18, 1976.The Globe and Mail
But turning his vision into an actual building proved, well, challenging. Mr. Taillibert was a difficult fellow who always thought he knew best. Strikes, Montreal weather and rising costs delayed construction. The tower was completed only in 1987, more than a decade after the Olympics.
The retractable roof never really worked. It ripped. It leaked. Snow poured through. In all the years the stadium has been there – nearly 50 now – it has opened and closed just 88 times. The fixed roof of fibreglass membrane installed in 1998 is kaput, too. At last count it had 20,000 tears in it.
Now our provincial government is proposing to replace that roof with yet another, this one featuring a transparent opening to let the light in. The price tag, my friends, is $870-million.
Now I might seem like the last one to be fretting about what something costs. I once said that the Olympics could no more run a deficit than a man could have a baby. Hundreds of millions of dollars and decades later, Quebeckers were still paying the bill.
Up here, wise guys with nothing better to do are always reminding me of the Aislin cartoon that shows me sporting a pregnant belly, speaking into the phone and saying, “Allo, Morgentaler?” Every now and then Leonard Cohen floats by, grins at me and simply pats his stomach.
But the afterlife gives a man a lot of time for second thoughts. I was too proud, too stubborn, too afraid to admit when I was wrong. I left taxpayers with a heavy burden. It would be a scandal if my successors did the same.
The Big O had some wonderful moments. The everlasting glory of those Olympic Games. The heady days when Nos Amours, the Expos, were atop the standings in Major League Baseball. A few memorable, mass-audience concerts.
But the Expos are long gone. And, to be honest, the stadium was too huge, too cavernous to make a good ballpark. Neither football nor soccer teams use it, either. Spending almost a billion dollars on an arena no one wants to play in seems extravagant even to me.
Better to tear the thing down. Put something more useful in its place. A housing complex with the highest environmental standards on the planet. The country’s longest skating trail, winding through a new forest of Laurentian majesty. A research and innovation hub that attracts the world’s best minds.
If I had one virtue as mayor, it was my ambition. Slapping a new roof on a decaying white elephant is not ambitious; it is dull, conservative, pedestrian. That is not the Montreal I know and love. Tear it down, Montreal. Start over.