Jean Drapeau
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Jean Drapeau CC , GOQ (February 18, 1916 – August 12, 1999) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as mayor of Montréal from 1954 to 1957 and 1960 to 1986. During his tenure as mayor he was responsible for the construction of the Montréal 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, the Montreal Expos.
Although a visionary, his mishandling of the construction of the Olympic Games facilities resulted in massive cost overruns and left the city with a debt that took its citizens over thirty years to fully pay off.
Early life and career
The son of Joseph-Napoléon Drapeau and Berthe (Alberta) M, artineau, Jean Drapeau was born in Montréal 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. In 1942, he ran as an independent candidate in a federal by-election, but lost; he then practiced as a criminal lawyer in Montréal. In 1945, he was married to Marie-Claire Boucher. They had three sons. During the Asbestos Strike of 1949, he took on the legal defence of some of the strikers. In 1950, he helped Pacifique (Pax) Plante in leading the inquiry into corruption and morality in Montréal, thus acquiring notoriety.
Mayor of Montreal
In the municipal election of 1954, he was elected mayor of Montréal, as the candidate of the Civic Action League, on an electoral platform of cleaning the municipal administration. In the election of 1957, he lost to Sarto Fournier but he was elected again in the election of 1960 and from then he was reelected without interruption, until he retired from political life in 1986. During his tenure as mayor, Montréal saw, in the 1960s, the construction of the metro system, Place des arts and the universal exposition of 1967. To help with the city's finances, he created in 1968 the first public lottery in Canada, which he named simply the "voluntary tax", an idea that would later be further developed by the provincial government. During the municipal elections of October, 1970, Drapeau cleverly used the proclamation of the War measures Act and the October crisis to discredit and neutralize the candidates of the opposition party, some of which were imprisoned only to be released after the election was over. The 1970s saw the preparation of the 1976 Summer Olympics. The end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s were marked by growing public criticism of his municipal administration and by the creation in 1974 of a new opposition party, which gradually grew in popularity during the next decade. Drapeau did not seek reelection in the election of 1986, which was won by the opposition.In 1967, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1987 he was made a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec.
On his passing in 1999, Drapeau was interred in the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal, Quebec.
One of the biggest parks in Montreal, composed of Ile Notre-Dame and Saint Helen's Island in the middle of the Saint Lawrence river and site of the universal exposition of 1967, was named in his honour, as was the Metro station serving the park.
Quotation
"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.|- style="text-align: center;" |- style="text-align: center;"
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