Everything about Jean Drapeau totally explained
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's 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.
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.
(External Link
)
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 didn't 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."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Jean Drapeau'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://jean_drapeau.totallyexplained.com">Jean Drapeau Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
