[MTLskyline]

August 5, 2013
Past Visions Of A Future That Never Came
Mirabel Airport is the king of Montreal’s white elephants.
By Stephen Kernaghan

In the 60s and 70s Montreal had a special sort of confidence, imagining it would need an airport almost as big as the city itself. It was a confidence driven by the prediction that Montreal would have seven million inhabitants by the year 2000.

Tourists were flocking to the city for Expo 67, and Montreal was seeing a 20 per cent annual increase in air traffic. Based on that rate of increase, the federal government predicted that by 1985, Montreal would have 20 million air passengers a year. That was well beyond the capacity of the aging airport in Dorval. Like the city of seven million, this prediction was overly ambitious.

While Montreal’s long-time mayor Jean Drapeau was building the monuments to his reign, Pierre Trudeau was looking to make his own mark on the city. But it wasn’t going to be easy. Premier Robert Bourassa had his own vision for the city and the province. While Trudeau wanted the airport built west of Montreal, closer to Ottawa, Bourassa wanted it to be built to the east, in Drummondville. They compromised on Mirabel, sixty kilometres north of the city.

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http://silomontreal.com/features/pas...-never-came-3/