Les Jeux Olympiques

In 1971, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1976 Summer Games to Montreal. Work on the main stadium was intended to start in 1973, but industrial disputes delayed it by 2 years; the last seats were installed in the stadium 4 days before the opening ceremony.

Being the 1970's, the whole area is an ecstasy of concrete – 400 million cubic metres of it.

Actually, that photo is misleading; the tower wasn't completed in time for the games. In fact it wasn't finished until 11 years later in 1987. The stadium is built from a series of concrete sections put together like the segments of an orange. Each segment was balanced so that it was self-supporting. It is a requirement of the IOC that the summer games be played on real grass in the open air, but the original plans for the stadium included a retractable roof which could be closed to allow it to be used during the winter. The weight of the roof would upset the balance of the concrete segments and so the idea was that a flexible roof would be suspended from the tower.

Well, the roof thing never really worked out. When it was eventually installed, it proved unable to stand up to the weather conditions and tore frequently. Neither could it take the weight of the snow that fell on it in winter. Eventually, it was replaced with the current, fixed, fibre-glass roof. This, too, cannot take the snowfall, requiring the space underneath it to be heated to prevent snow build up.

Redundant though it may be for roof-rolling-up purposes, the tower, which is the most-inclined tower in the world, does make a striking landmark on the skyline of the east end of Montreal. It also provides a platform for some pretty stunning views.

You get up the tower on a cable car. You can see it on this picture – about a quarter of the way up the tower;

Looking down from the observation deck, you get a great view of the Olympic Park itself. This was the velodrome, for example:

After the games, the velodrome was converted to what's called the Biodome, where several of Canada's climtic zones have been recreated. It sounded good in the description but, when I got there, I discovered that, along with their language, the French left their attitude to industrial relations:

Where the football field is in this picture was originally a 400m practice track. Behind it, the two pyramid-shaped buildings (one pair is facing away from us) were the Olympic Village, but they're now used as supported accommodation for elderly people:

I can think of worse places to while away the twilight years.

Looking west, you can see the islands in the St. Lawrence river that I sailed past on my boat tour.

The nearest of the crossings on that picture is the Jacques Cartier Bridge as it passes over Île Sainte Hélène. If you zoom in on the picture you can just see the roller-coasters and other rides of the La Ronde amusement park.

North of that last picture is the central business district:

The road leading from the bottom-right corner of that picture is Rue Sherbrooke which must be one of the longest in the city. My hotel was on the corner of Rue Sherbrooke somewhere in the middle of those skyscrapers.

North again is the Mont Royal:

The mountain was named after the King of France by the first French settlers. It was a corruption of Mont Royal that gave the island, and later the city, its name. If you look very closely, you can just see a cross on the top of the mountain. It's dwarfed by, and is a little to the left of, the TV mast. The cross was originally erected in 1643 by Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve (who founded the city). He had vowed to raise a cross on top of Mont Royal if the town were spared from flooding, a common occurrence for the first settlement which was built at the confluence of two rivers. The town was spared and de Maisonneuve kept his end of the bargain.

Looking straight down, these flags represent all the countries that won gold medals at the games.

Here they are from ground level:

Two of the ones in this picture are from countries which no longer exist. Now, children, can you tell which ones? For a bonus mark, there's a third flag that falls into this category, but it's round the back. What might that be? One flag that isn't there is the Canadian one. Being a generous lot, the Canadians gave all the gold medals to their guests (the first time a host nation had ever failed to win a gold medal. Canada repeated the feat at Calgary, before finally breaking the mould at Vancouver, where they won more than anyone else, presumably to make a point).

Looking back on the return journey, this was the view up the cable railway:

Because the tower curves, so the gradient is not constant, there is a system of hydraulics to keep the cable car horizontal.

Once back on the ground, I took a tour of the stadium itself. As well as the track and field arena, the building also houses the swimming pools, of which there are 6. This is the diving pool, for example (looking much like a diving pool anywhere else in the world):

The arena is now something of a white elephant.

The current (fixed) roof doesn't allow grass to grow so the whole area is covered in concrete. There are also fewer seats than there were for the games. These days the place is used for exhibitions, concerts and the occasional sports fixture (for which artificial grass is laid). It doesn't come close to covering its running costs, and there seems to be a constant threat simmering away in the background simply to demolish the whole place. I hope they don't. Economics can't always be the deciding factor, surely.