Jean Drapeau

Mayor Jean Drapeau CC GOQ
File:JeanDrapeau.jpg
38th Mayor of Mayor of Montreal
In office 1954–1957
Preceded by	Camillien Houde
Succeeded by	Sarto Fournier
In office 1960–1986
Preceded by	Sarto Fournier
Succeeded by	Jean Doré
Personal details
Born	February 18, 1916 Montreal, Quebec
Died	August 12, 1999 Montreal, Quebec
Political party	Civic Party of Montreal
Spouse	Marie-Claire Boucher
Alma mater	Université de Montréal
Profession	Lawyer

Jean Drapeau CC , GOQ (February 18, 1916 – August 12, 1999) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as mayor of Montreal from 1954 to 1957 and 1960 to 1986. During his tenure as mayor he was responsible for the construction of the Montreal Metro system and the Place des Arts concert hall, for conceiving Expo 67, for securing the 1976 Summer Olympics, and for helping to bring Major League Baseball to Montreal with the creation of the Montreal Expos.

Although he is remembered as a visionary, Drapeau's mishandling of the construction of the Olympic Games facilities resulted in massive cost overruns and left the city with a debt that has taken its citizens over thirty years to fully pay off.

Early life and career

The son of Joseph-Napoléon Drapeau and Alberta (Berthe) Martineau, Jean Drapeau was born in Montreal in 1916. His father, an insurance broker, city councillor and election worker for the Union nationale, introduced him to politics. Jean Drapeau studied law at the Université de Montréal.

Drapeau was a protégé of nationalist priest Lionel Groulx in the 1930s and 1940s and was a member of André Laurendeau's anti-conscription Ligue pour la défense du Canada. In 1942, he ran as a candidate of the nationalist Bloc Populaire, which opposed Canadian conscription during World War II, in a federal by-election (see Second Conscription Crisis). Drapeau lost the election. He was also a Bloc populaire candidate in the 1944 provincial election but was badly defeated in his Montreal constituency.

He began his practice as a criminal lawyer in Montreal in 1944. During the Asbestos Strike of 1949, he took on the legal defence of some of the strikers.

In 1945, he was married to Marie-Claire Boucher. They had three sons.

Mayor of Montreal

Drapeau's profile grew as the result of his role in a public inquiry led by Pacifique Plante into police corruption in the early 1950s. When Camillien Houde retired as mayor of Montreal, Drapeau was well poised to succeed him.

In the municipal election of 1954 at the age of 37, Drapeau was elected mayor of Montreal, as the candidate of the Civic Action League, on an electoral platform of cleaning up the municipal administration. In the election of 1957, he lost to Sarto Fournier who was backed by the powerful Premier of Quebec Maurice Duplessis but Drapeau was elected again in the election of 1960 and from then he was re-elected without interruption until he retired from political life in 1986. His long tenure would eventually turn the Parti Civique into his personal fief, with no clear heir.

File:Drapeau on steps of Place des Nations e000996634xc.jpg

Drapeau on the steps of Place des Nations, during the opening of the Man and his World exhibition, on April 15, 1968.

During Jean Drapeau's tenure as mayor, Montreal saw, in the 1960s, the initial construction of the Montreal Metro subway system, Place des Arts and Expo 67, the universal exposition of 1967. To help with the city's finances, Drapeau created in 1968 the first public lottery in Canada, which he named simply the "voluntary tax", an idea that would later be taken over and further developed by the provincial government.

During the municipal elections of October 1970, Drapeau used the proclamation of the War Measures Act and the October crisis to discredit and neutralize the candidates of the opposition party accusing them of being terrorist sympathisers and supporters of the Front de libération du Québec. Some opposition candidates, including his main opponent, were imprisoned only to be released after the end of the election in which Drapeau's party won all 52 seats.

The 1970s saw the preparation of the 1976 Summer Olympics. Cost overruns and scandals forced the Quebec government to take over the project. The Summer Games was also marked by Drapeau's controversial decision to dismantle the Corridart public art display just before the Games. [1]

The end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s were marked by growing public criticism of Drapeau's municipal administration and by the creation in 1974 of a new opposition party, which gradually grew in popularity over the next decade. Drapeau did not seek re-election in the election of 1986, which was won by the opposition. Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Drapeau to the position of Canadian ambassador to UNESCO in Paris.

Despite the nationalism of his youth, Drapeau remained neutral during the 1980 Quebec referendum.

In 1967, Drapeau was made a Companion of the Order of Canada and in 1987 a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec.

After his death in 1999 (at age 83), Drapeau was interred in the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal.

One of the biggest parks in Montreal, Parc Jean-Drapeau, composed of Île Notre-Dame and Ile Sainte-Hélène in the middle of the Saint Lawrence river, site of the universal exposition of 1967, was renamed in his honour, as was the Metro station serving the park.

Quotations

"The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby." Jean Drapeau after Montreal won the right to host the 1976 Olympics. Following the Olympics, the city was left with a debt of $1 billion.

As rival Toronto grew in size and prestige, Drapeau declared: "Let Toronto become Milan. Montreal will always be Rome."

One opponent called him "a combination of Walt Disney and Al Capone."

His critics described most of his projects as circuses. Drapeau replied: "What the masses want are monuments."

External links

• Canadian Encyclopedia entry on Jean Drapeau

Multimedia

• CBC Archives Drapeau's vision of bringing the Eiffel Tower to Montreal for Expo 67.