A tale of two cities
Richard Burnett
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Houde stomping the hustings
photo: Courtesy NFB
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Why Montreal's fabled mayors Camillien Houde and Jean Drapeau put the new generation of mayoral candidates to shame
The two most popular, and arguably most beloved, mayors in the history of Montreal were seven-time mayor Camillien Houde - known as "Mister Montreal" during Montreal's wide open sin-city era - and his successor, Jean Drapeau, who served as eight-time mayor from 1954 to 1957 and 1960 to 1986, and turned Montreal into a world-class city.While their political longevity had much to do with their deeds, their charisma and personalities did too, easily trumping the current crop of candidates for mayor of Montreal.
"In the old days, our civic politicians at least provided us with some entertainment," says William Weintraub, 83, reporter with The Gazette in the late '40s and '50s and author of the 1996 book City Unique: Montreal Days and Nights in the 1940s and 50s. "They were colourful people who uttered colourful remarks, and we're hard-pressed to think of any of the current candidates - including the current mayor - as anything but drab... Richard Bergeron, who believes the Americans are behind 9/11, is a little bit colourful, but in a frightening way."
Weintraub continues, "Camillien Houde was noted for his witty remarks. Once, when the King and Queen of England were here, he said to them at a dinner, 'I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and my wife thanks you from her bottom too.'"
The excellent 1976 NFB doc His Worship, Mr. Montreal recounts the time Houde was riding in a convertible downtown with then-Princess Elizabeth. As the throngs cheered, Houde turned to her and
said, "Some of that [applause] is for you!"Adds Weintraub, "It was the same with Jean Drapeau. He said, 'The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.' That was fodder for the cartoonists."
But Drapeau dug in his heels. "What the masses want are monuments," he famously said, as well as, "Let Toronto become Milan. Montreal will always be Rome."
Weintraub notes Drapeau knew where he wanted to take the city. "There was Expo 67, the redevelopment of downtown and Place Ville Marie, as well as the metro. He had a great vision at a time of great prosperity and expansion."
Meanwhile, Houde gave Montreal the Botanical Gardens, the Atwater Market and the Île Ste-Hélène project. "Houde's and Drapeau's policies were more largely articulated. Dear old Camillien built public toilets in Montreal and everybody knew about that. Their policies were articulated. What we get from the present fellows are generalities."
Montrealers also loved Houde and Drapeau for their humanity.
"For all his failings, Houde had a very warm heart," Weintraub recalls. "During the depths of the [Great] Depression, when money was very scarce, delegations of poor people would come to plead with him at city hall, and when there was nothing left in the treasury, he would reach into his pocket and hand them a few dollars."
But, as Weintraub says, "Drapeau was a prude and Houde was not."
Montreal's sin-city days came crashing down around Houde in 1954 when Drapeau successfully campaigned to eliminate corruption at city hall (Houde himself was never implicated). Today's headlines in newspapers around the world, including The Economist magazine, are reviving Montreal's reputation as the "rottenest city on the continent" and the "Palermo of Canada."
"To my mind, corruption in the earlier years was all on a local level, no huge overall thing like the water-meter scandal," says Weintraub. "There were a lot of little payoffs in the constituencies. People did little favours but they were on a small scale. Today, the cleaning of city hall seems to affect all politicians and seems to be a gigantic affair. It staggers the imagination and it's hard to believe anything will be done.
"My feeling is there will be inquiries but they won't be very thorough... I don't think anybody's got their heart in it. There are too many skeletons in every closet."
So, as exasperated Montrealers wonder who to vote for this weekend, no doubt Camillien Houde and Jean Drapeau are both turning in their graves.
Well, given the choice between small scandals and larger than life personalities vs. huge scandals, widespread corruption and self-effacingly bland candidates, I'd definitely opt for the former. I can't remember the last time we had a colorful mayor with anything approaching a cult of personality. Tremblay and his most immediate predecessors - Bourque and Dore have all been pretty much interchangeable. Also it seems with each successive regime, the trend towards sanitization becomes more pronounced. After all, it looks like Tremblay's legacy will include not only the water meter debacle but the obliteration of our storied Red Light district as well.
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David St Pierre
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