Posted Sep 30, 2015, 6:49 AM
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Go Chiefs!
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Montreal
Posts: 19,032
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MolsonExport
That Montreal set....badassed. Wicked collection.
And on the balance, Drapeau was a disaster.
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I don't want to go off-topic but how exactly was he a disaster?
During his tenure as a mayor, he made Montreal (metropolitan) grow from 2M to 2.9M.
He is the person that made Montreal a world class metropolis. He had vision which is something that Canada as whole currently lacks. For Drapeau, it was out of question to go the cheap route. So what he left a big debt? Are we going to ignore the million positive things he did? Even nowadays, in 2015, the city benefits tremendously economically from his projects. Think of the F1 GP for example, who puts the city on the World map every single year ($100M+ in 1 weekend). We wouldn't have it if it wasn't for Drapeau.
Jean Drapeau's legacy
Quote:
There aren't many mayors in Canada who make national news very often. Right now I suppose most well-informed Canadians could name the mayor of Toronto. But that's probably for all the wrong reasons. My guess is that once you get about a hundred kilometres outside any other city, the name of the mayor is a trivia answer for all but the wonkiest of wonks.
This week marks the birthday of the most famous mayor in Canadian history. Jean Drapeau was born on February 18, 1916. He was the mayor of Montreal from 1954 to 1957, and then from 1960 until his retirement in 1986. And he ran the city with a dynamism and a vision that has rarely been matched, and never surpassed, by any politician at any level of government in our history.
Drapeau was a hands-on operator. Always looking to put his city on the world map. Always looking for the next dazzling project. Montreal changed not just while he was the mayor, but because he was the mayor.
Drapeau built Place des Arts, the city's premier stage and concert hall. He started building the metro system, and made its stations more beautiful than some art museums. He brought Expo '67 to Montreal, the greatest of all centennial celebrations. He persuaded Major League Baseball to cross the border for the first time and put a franchise in Montreal. And he won the first Olympic Games for Canada, the summer games of 1976.
The Olympics eventually sullied his reputation. From the beginning, critics warned that Drapeau's budget was impossibly optimistic and the games would cost far more than he projected. Drapeau's riposte became legendary. "The Olympics," he said, "could no more lose money than a man could have a baby." The games lost a billion dollars. And Drapeau was rightly blamed.
But Drapeau had boundless energy. And he had more ideas than Don Cherry has suits. In 1968, lotteries were illegal in Canada. So Drapeau started what he called a "voluntary tax". (How's that for honesty in labeling?). A "donation" was $2 and the grand prize was $100,000 in silver. The mayor said people all over the world would enjoy, "participating financially in the expansion and progress of the Canadian metropolis." And he was right. Montreal made a good deal of money from this "tax". But the courts eventually decided that no matter what it was called, it was an illegal lottery. Almost as soon as Drapeau was shut down, the federal government made lotteries legal, and every province in the land jumped in. Today you can play Lotto 6/49, Atlantic Keno, Quebec 49, Lottario, Western 6/49, BC 49, and at least a dozen more all because of Jean Drapeau. And no one has the nerve to call any lottery a voluntary tax.
The idea of putting Expo '67 in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, partly on a man-made island, was Drapeau's. The Prime Minister at the time, Lester Pearson, marveled that in a country with so much land, we had to build more.
The mayor would never accept defeat. When Expo was forced to open with the modular apartments of Habitat unfinished, Drapeau spread the word that the exhibit had been left incomplete by design, so that visitors could see its construction process more clearly.
Drapeau won 92.5% of the vote in 1970. And his party won every seat on city council. But that was during the October Crisis and Drapeau had unfairly smeared the opposition as a front for terrorists. Council meetings became a forum for approving every Drapeau proposal, no questions asked. In fact, even a CBC reporter, chasing the mayor down a City Hall corridor with the camera rolling, was told by Drapeau, "You need my permission to ask questions." Let that be a lesson in the perils of absolute power.
But there was never a hint that Drapeau was corrupt. He lived in the same middle-class house all the years he was mayor. He drove himself to work every day before dawn.
Jean Drapeau died in 1999. His city renamed the Expo islands, "Parc Jean-Drapeau," and the metro station there carries his name as well. Canadians everywhere should remember him. Imperfect? Of course. But a man who sometimes made dreams come true.
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http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/peterman...us-legacy.html
Last edited by Nicko999; Sep 30, 2015 at 6:59 AM.
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