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The Morning After

By: Serge Dupuis

Serge Dupuis

Contributing Historian

Author of six books, and a wide variety of articles and reports, Serge Dupuis was selected as “inspiring path” by the Journées de la relève en recherche de l’ACFAS (2021). He has also won the following awards:

• Canada Council for the Arts Scholarly Book Award (2024) for  Une histoire du Moulin-à-Fleur de Sudbury: quartier ouvrier, territoire canadien-français, published by Ottawa University Press (2025)
• The Richard-Arès Prize for Best Essay published in Quebec (2018) for Le Canada français devant la Francophonie mondiale : l’expérience du mouvement Richelieu dans la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle, published by Éditions du Septentrion (2017)
• Canada Council for the Arts Scholarly Book Award (2016) for Le Canada français devant la Francophonie mondiale (2017)

Serge has taught at universities across Ontario and Quebec from 2011 to 2017, then went on to concentrate entirely on the research, writing, and popularization of history throughout diverse forms of media since 2018.

Born in Sudbury (Ontario), Serge Dupuis is a professional historian working in Quebec; he is an associate member at the Chaire pour le développement de la recherche sur la culture d’expression française en Amérique du Nord (CEFAN) at the University of Laval.

Serge Dupuis has a bachelor’s degree (Laurentienne, 2007), a master’s degree (Ottawa, 2009) and a doctorat (Waterloo, 2013), then completed a postdoctoral fellowship (Laval, 2016); he received grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for his three graduate studies.

The Games provided excitement and pride to audiences and athletes. Sprinter Abby Hoffman recalls:

I had come from Toronto, where it was very hot. The humidity was high as well. But in Montreal during the Games, that was not the case. I was pleasantly surprised, since we had done well for training […]. On every stage, the public interest in Canadian athletes was amazing! I will never forget their enthusiasm! […] People could stay up until two in the morning to watch a volleyball game between two European teams they didn’t know, just because they had become fanatics! We were a different country by the end of those Olympics. The openness to sports has persisted […]. In Quebec especially, another essential element was part of this legacy. Despite the odds, the Olympic Games were held in Montreal. They made the people of Quebec very proud and confident in their abilities^[i].

Seeking to ride the winds of optimism in Quebec, the province’s Liberal party called an early election, two years before the end of a second mandate. Liberals also sought to undercut the Parti Québécois (PQ), who appealed to 40% of Francophones, while remaining unpopular among Anglophones and allophones^[ii]. Robert Bourassa also wanted to avoid the true cost of the games, which would be known in 1977, from becoming a ballot-box issue.

During the games, the PQ did not criticize Canadian patriotism fed by the Olympics. For example, Marcel Léger, a Member of the National Assembly, presented the Olympiad as “a unique opportunity to open ourselves up to the world and be globally present^[iii]”. During the games, the PQ rolled out the campaign “For a Quebec that is open to the world – Parti québécois”, printed on 15,000 stickers and ten billboards in the Montreal area. “We wanted to discreetly show visitors and Quebeckers that the PQ did not intend to put up barriers if it achieved independence^[iv]”, explained Michel Charpentier, party coordinator, in July 1976.

The Liberals may have been naïve to think that the cost of the Games would not become an election issue, even in the fall of 1976. In the days following the closing ceremonies, the Parti Québécois called for an inquiry into the real cost of the Games^[v]. Even liberal-leaning newspapers such as Quebec City’s Le Soleil and the Montreal Gazette called for “an inquiry into the cost of the Games”, as “one might rightly ask what the government is seeking to hide in ‘the Olympic Games affair’”. According to editorialist Claude Masson:

Such an inquiry would also help define the actual part played by inflation in cost increases, the many stoppages and additional expenses they brought with them, the share of profits received by professional companies and business people in this urgent project relative to what they would have been in a normal situation. Finally, an extensive inquiry would surely allow new ways to be discovered to prepare bids or allocate contracts, as well as imagining new technical processes better suited to the 1980s to complete projects on the same scale as James Bay, subway construction or other major projects costing hundreds of millions if not several billion dollars. The Bourassa government, which had taken over from the city of Montreal through the Régie, citing excessive cost, would now be hard pressed to refuse an inquiry on the same subject that led it to exercise a certain degree of supervision over Mayor Drapeau^[vi].

The Gazette astutely referred to the games as “the Big O”, in reference to the elliptical stadium and playing on the financial abyss of a large “owe” for taxpayers^[vii]. Revelations of corruption allowed the Parti Québécois to present itself as a “clean” party focused on the interests of the people. On November 15, the Liberal Party lost significant support among Francophones (to the Parti Québécois) and Anglophones (to the Union Nationale). Comparatively to the October 1973 election, Liberal support shrank from 55% to 34%, and the Parti Québécois increased its share of votes from 30% to 41%, in November 1976, and formed a majority government.

Three weeks after being elected, premier René Lévesque announced an inquiry into construction of the Olympic facilities. Lévesque appointed Superior Court Justice Albert Malouf to guide a team of 60 lawyers, architects, accountants, researchers, engineers and writers^[viii]. Initially conceived as self-financing, the Games resulted in a deficit of close to one billion dollars. The Lévesque government quickly imposed a special $214 million tax on the city of Montreal, “the burden to be paid by the citizens of Montreal”, as they were “the first beneficiaries of the [Olympic] facilities in their area^[ix]”.

On April 30, 1980, Albert Malouf submitted a 1000-page report, blaming primarily Jean Drapeau for the Olympic financial disaster. Judge Malouf criticized the “administrative irresponsibility of the authorities and the city and the OCOG in choosing an unprecedented concept and a foreign architect^[x]”, chosen without tender. The Malouf report described the Olympic project as a male fraternity in which decisions were made at lavish dinners, on the golf course or on trips to Paris. Of course, significant inflation in the cost of building materials, between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, had also doubled and tripled the cost of hydro-electric dams between their design and their completion^[xi]. But what could account for the final cost reaching 13 times the initial estimates? Justice Malouf explained this result through numerous procedural irregularities, such as:

• The lack of a contract or salary limit for Roger Taillibert;
• The multiple changes to plans by Taillibert and Jean Drapeau;
• The use of concrete mixers to build villas and swimming pools for friends and clients of the cement companies instead of being used for the project;
• The exorbitant electricity bill for work scheduled during cold weather;
• The difficulty of raising concrete structures weighing 41,000 tonnes;
• Construction of a temporary velodrome for the World Cycling Championships in 1974 ;
• Workers’ reduced productivity, even on business days;
• Corruption leading to salaries being paid to absent employees;
• Increased security costs;
• Envelopes of cash passing between businesses and the Quebec Liberal Party.

“By managing to finish work to open the Games’, wrote Albert Malouf, the Régie des installations olympiques (RIO) created by the province “succeeded in achieving the only goal it could achieve under the circumstances^[xii]” : avoiding the supreme humiliation of the Games not being held in 1976. Upon reading the Malouf report, Jean Drapeau was furious, seeing within it “a zeal to direct blame whose lack of proportion robs it of all credibility^[xiii]”. In 1982, the city accused Malouf of “Francophobia” in his portrayal of Roger Taillibert, a “wise choice”, it contended, as Taillibert had completed the Parc des Princes “within the set budgets^[xiv]”.

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declined to increase its initial contribution ($142 million) to absorb the debt incurred by the Games. Except for the tax imposed on Montrealers in 1976, the Quebec government would have to absorb the $790 million shortfall alone^[xv]. The final bill of $1.6 billion even excluded the installation of a roof membrane and the construction of the tower^[xvi]. Rattled by the Malouf report, the Lévesque government considered suspending the completion of the stadium indefinitely. A shocked Roger Taillibert passed word of this hesitation to French prime minister Pierre Mauroy ahead of a visit to Quebec. Mauroy raised the issue with Lévesque, who recalled the technical difficulty of completing the work. In response, France offered to lend the services a Paris expert in pre-stressed concrete to the James Bay energy company in charge of completing the stadium. Lévesque accepted the help of France’s chief engineer of roads and bridges to plan the work, spread over five years and estimated at $870 million.

Ravaged by public opinion, the two men responsible for the financial fiasco escaped relatively unharmed: Jean Drapeau was re-elected in the 1982 municipal elections and Roger Taillibert received a total of $12.9 million in fees^[xvii]. For many, the Montreal games serve as the prime example of wasted public funds. According to historians Martin Pâquet and Stéphane Savard, the fiasco fed into cynicism about government intervention:

Like the two faces of a coin, the main events of the Quiet Revolution evoke happy nostalgia or, in contrast, bitter memories. On the obverse, the 1967 Universal Exposition symbolized the hope created by the movement to secure a place on the world stage. On the reverse, the 1976 Olympic Games instead evoke cracks in the dream: a stadium not completed for the event, a huge budget deficit, the organization’s multiple failures, a desire to move on […]. With a hint of disenchantment, the Olympic Games ushered in the last phase of the Quiet Revolution, between the mid-1970s and the start of the 1980s […]. They announced the start of a questioning of the role of the state in general and the virtues of socio-economic intervention in particular^[xviii].

Despite all that has been said, the Olympic Park represents more than a financial burden. Richard Pound, a former Olympian and founder of the World Anti-Doping Agency, recalls that Montreal’s Olympic facilities “are much used by athletes^[xix]”. Fifty years later, Quebec is over-represented relative to its demographic size in the Canadian delegation to the Olympic Games. According to journalist Marco Fortier, the Montreal games “profoundly changed the city’s urban fabric”, encouraged “the trend of getting in shape” and “confirmed Montreal’s place in the world cities club^[xx]”. Most of its users today are nearby residents of Mercier, Hochelaga, Maisonneuve, Rosemont and La Petite-Patrie neighbourhoods^[xxi]. Dozens of sports federations comprising thousands of associations and clubs are the legacy of the 21^st Olympiad. The stadium is also a powerhouse in terms of events, from sports fixtures to performances for Quebec’s national day by Diane Dufresne and Céline Dion, not to mention many international stars (Genesis, Madonna, Pink Floyd, etc.) who have played there. The Olympic Park, which has included the Biodome since 1992, also employs more than 1000 people and draws more than one million visitors annually.

^[i] Abby Hoffman, in Pierre Gince, Pierre Gince, Les Jeux olympiques de Montréal et nous : 50 ans, 50 regards, Montreal, Éditions de l’Homme, 2026, p. 141-142.

^[ii] Michel Roy, “La guerre des sondages est commencée”, Le Devoir, April 22, 1976, p. 1 ; Alain-Marie Carron, “Au Québec, les partis d’opposition critiquent la décision de M. Bourassa d’organiser des élections anticipées”, Le Monde, October 26, 1976, online.

^[iii] Marcel Léger, in Benjamin Plante, “Lorsque sport, politique et culture se rencontrent : les combats des politiciens nationalistes lors des Jeux olympiques de Montréal”, Histoire Québec, vol. 29, no. 4 (2024), p. 29.

^[iv] Michel Charpentier, in “PQ – Jeux”, Le Quotidien, July 31, 1976, p. 19.

^[v] Pierre Champagne, “Le PQ réclame une véritable enquête sur le coût des Jeux”, Le Soleil, August 24, 1976, p. A -1.

^[vi] Claude Masson, “Pour une enquête sur le coût des Jeux”, Le Soleil, August 24, 1976, p. A -4.

^[vii] Jack Jedwab, “Le comportement électoral des minorités au Québec lors des élections de 1976”, Bulletin d’histoire politique, vol. 2, no. 1 (spring 1994), p. 5-15.

^[viii] Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 46.

^[ix] “Le plus grand changement politique depuis la Confédération au Québec”, La Voix de l’Est, December 31, 1976, p. 16.

^[x] Albert Malouf, April 30, 1980, in Michel C. Auger, “L’inflation et la faible productivité des travailleurs sont les grands responsables du coût élevé des Jeux”, Le Devoir, June 3, 1987, p. 1.

^[xi] “L’inflation”, Le Devoir, June 3, 1987, p. 10 ; Marco Fortier, “À Montréal, les Jeux qui ont failli être reportés”, Le Devoir, January 26, 2026, online ; Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 47-48.

^[xii] Albert Malouf, in Robert Bourassa, “’C’était une question d’honneur’”, La Presse, July 26, 1991, p. A -1.

^[xiii] “Texte intégral de la déclaration du maire Drapeau”, La Presse, June 16, 1980, p. A 5.

^[xiv] City of Montreal, in Michel C. Auger, June 3, 1987, op. cit., p. 1.

^[xv] Marco Fortier, “Avec le 50^e anniversaire des Jeux de 1976, Montréal veut ‘recommencer à rêver’”, Le Devoir, January 3, 2026, online ; Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 335-336.

^[xvi] Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 284-285.

^[xvii] Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 49.

^[xviii] Martin Pâquet and Stéphane Savard, Brève histoire de la Révolution tranquille, Montreal, Les Éditions du Boréal, 2021, p. 199-200.

^[xix] Richard Pound, in Pierre Gince, 2026, op. cit., p. 148.

^[xx] Marco Fortier, “Avec le 50^e anniversaire des Jeux de 1976, Montréal veut ‘recommencer à rêver’”, Le Devoir, January 3, 2026, online.

^[xxi] Réal Ménard, “Les quatre legs des Jeux olympiques de 1976”, Le Devoir, July 9-10, 2016, p. B5.